Bacon Macaron
23 November 2009
28 Comments
For me, Bacon alone symbolises everything that’s good about this world. With its versatility and impossibility of being cooked incorrectly, I’d dare say it’s a fail proof ingredient. Further to its advantage is obviously the way it tastes. Salty, fatty goodness, all packed in a single strip. There is actually a point to my random babbling about bacon. Sometime last week, I spoke to Billy who mentioned he wanted to try making Macaron with bacon somehow incorporated into it. Macaron and Bacon, sweet and salty. Soft and crispy, what a genius combination.
Bacon Macaron with maple syrup buttercream
On one of the hottest days ever recorded in November I gave the bacon Macaron a go. As Minh, Squishies and Howard looked on with sweat dripping down their face I felt a little pressured. Standing there in the heat are my 3 photographers/taste testers, if I screw this up I know I’d be hearing about my failures at all our future EST outings. Determined not to embarrass myself, I used the recipe that has so far worked for me each time, Black sesame and green tea macaron.
Macaron Recipe
Recipe
- 110gm almond meal
- 200gm icing sugar
- 3 egg whites
- 30gm caster sugar
Piped macaronage- pre baking
Method
- 3 days prior to baking the macaron, separate the white from the egg yolk. Allow it to age in the regrigerator by covering it with a cloth or paper towel. On the day of baking, remove from the fridge and allow egg white to reach room temperature before whisking.
- Whisk egg whites till it reaches a soft peak, gradually incorporate the caster sugar while beating. Whisk till a stiff peak is achieved (about 3 minutes of medium speed).
- Add 1/3 of the previously sifted almond meal and icing sugar into the egg white. With a spatula, mix the mixture, adding the remaining 2/3 of the mixture as you go. Continue mixing until the mixture is well incorporated and is of magma consistency.
- Pipe the mixture onto baking paper, leaving a gap of 2.5cm between each circle.
- Allow the macaronage to sit for half an hour, this dries out the outer layer- thus when baked forms a crispy shell.
- Pre-heat fan forced oven to 120 degrees celsius.
- Upon lightly touching the top of the piped macronage, the mixture should not stick to your finger. Once this has been achieved, bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes.
Piping maple syrup buttercream with my Macgyver piping bag
For the bacon sprinkle, I placed to pieces of bacon in the oven at 100 degrees celsius for 10 minutes on each side, or until it’s dried. The bacon is then broken up in to pieces and placed in a spice grinder.
After piping the macaronage, the bacon pieces is liberally sprinkled onto the surface.
Assembling the macaron
When I’m eating something with strange flavours, I love the accompaniment to be simple, as to not overwhelm the flavours of the main dish. As I’m at the stage of experimenting with macaron shells, I prefer the filling to be simple, so I tend to use vanilla buttercream. This time, I instead used Maple syrup buttercream. The smell of maple syrup I feel, always goes hand in hand with bacon.
Upon completion of the macaron, I couldn’t help but dig in to it immediately. At first, you can’t really taste the bacon, however you can tell that the macaron is not as sweet as it usually is. The maple syrup in the buttercream wasn’t immediately detectable either, however upon consumption there was an after taste, just enough to detect the bacon and the maple syrup. Whilst Minh was helping to photograph my Macaron, I couldn’t help but spy Squishies downing the macarons from the corner of my eye.
If you like bacon (who doesn’t), I think you should give this combination a go, I think you’ll be surprised how well the salty bacon goes with the sweet macaron.
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mycookinghut
Bacon macaron! Yes please! Love your McGyver piping bacon and I agree – who doesn’t love bacon!?!