Guest Recipe: Jordan's Mother's Day Macaroons

What better way to surprise Mum this Mother’s Day than with homemade French patisserie? Bring a hand-wrapped box of these dainty little things to her table and she’ll be telling her friends for weeks.

• Prep Time: 55 minutes
• Cook Time: 20 minutes
• Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Serves: 6-8

Category: Dessert,Biscuits & Cookies

Ingredients

For the macaroons
• 150g Icing sugar
• 100g Ground almonds
• 50g Caster sugar
• Egg whites from 2 eggs
• 1 tsp Lemon juice
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 4 drops Pink food colouring

For the lemon-buttercream filling

• 150g Unsalted butter (at room temperature)
• 150g Icing sugar
• 1 tsp Lemon extract

Method

1. Begin by preheating your oven to 150ºC/130ºC fan. Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper and set them aside.
2. Pour your icing sugar and almonds into a food processor and give them a couple of quick pulses. Sift into a large mixing bowl.
3. Now make your meringues. Add your egg whites to another mixing bowl and pour in the lemon juice. Whisk together until you get soft peaks. At this stage, you can add in your sugar a teaspoon at a time, still whisking to incorporate. Add your vanilla extract and food colouring. Whisk hard until you have quite firm peaks.
4. Gently fold your meringue mixture into your almond mixture. Keep folding to combine. The mixture should be thinner than when you start and should drizzle off a spoon easily.
5. Now pour your mixture into a piping bag. Don’t worry if you don’t have one: pour your mixture into a clean resealable sandwich bag. Squeeze by hand into one of the bottom corners and cut off about 1cm from the end to recreate the piping bag at home. 
6. Pipe circles of the mixture onto the greaseproof paper, no bigger than 2 or 3cm wide. Leave the same distance between each piped circle. To form their traditional crust, leave your macaroons to sit for 15-20 minutes before putting them into the oven.
7. To bake them, place them in the oven for 20 minutes. When cooked, remove from the tray and allow to cool on a wire rack. 
8. Whilst cooling, you can get on with your buttercream filling. Beat your butter with a wooden spoon in a mixing bowl until it becomes lighter and creamy. Next, add your icing sugar and gently beat it in. Once combined, you can add in the lemon extract. Taste your filling at this point - you may prefer to add more lemon flavouring.
9. Sandwich two macaroon halves with a teaspoon of the buttercream filling and serve.

If you had fun making Jordan's Mother's Day Macaroons, you'll find more delicious recipes on Jordan's website, www.foodandwriting.co.uk.