This was a tough one. Without nuts (without almonds/almond flour), macarons are a bit weird. I ended up making the macarons anyway, but they were huge and I left them out overnight and the next day they became a bit hard, and after that, they were more like very sweet biscuits. But, on the bright side I made macarons for the first time, Michael could eat them, and I learned some things along the way.

These macarons do turn out a bit hollow on the inside, as the creator of the recipe said. However, they still are tasty in the end! Don’t eat them too soon after they are ready though, otherwise they will stick your teeth together.

Ingredients

3-4 egg whites
72g caster sugar
240g finely grated white chocolate (if possible, buy grated chocolate. I bought a block and had to grate it myself! This should be very fine as it needs to pass through the hole of the piping bag. I used 200g.)
120g sifted icing sugar

Chocolate Ganache

150g dark chocolate chopped into smaller bits (I used a mixture of dark and milk chocolate, 100g milk, 50g dark.)
50g cream

Method

1. Whisk the egg whites and sugar until stiff (mixture should not fall out of the bowl when turned upside down – this takes awhile, so have patience). Colour may be added if desired.

2. Gently fold icing sugar and white chocolate into the mixture. Once combined, continue to fold until you reach this consistency: when you drop some mixture back into the bowl, it should slowly meld into the rest of the mixture.

3. Fill the mixture into a piping/ziploc bag (you may need to do this two times) and pipe small circles (approx. 3-3.5cm diameter because they will get bigger) onto non-stick baking paper. You can buy special paper/trays that show you the correct size to make.

4. Bake the macarons at 150 degrees C for about 20 minutes. You can bake them higher up for the first 15 minutes and then move them down for the last 5 minutes.

5. To make the ganache, put the dark chocolate bits into a bowl while heating up the cream. Pour the cream onto the chocolate and allow it to melt for about 2-3 minutes. Then stir until smooth. Place this mixture into another piping/ziploc bag and place in the fridge for about 5 minutes or until it is firm enough to pipe, but not too firm.

6. Take the macarons out of the oven and leave to cool on the paper. Afterwards, carefully peel them off. There may be a lot of the macaron that stays on the paper, but just make sure you have the main form of the macaron.

7. Pair similarly-sized macrons and fill with the ganache.

8. To store, put them into tupperware boxes once cool. Hopefully yours will stay chewy longer than mine!