Vanilla Macarons

• servings: 20 servings
• active time: 30 minutes
• total time: 48 minutes

Ingredients

Liquid from 2 x 400g cans of supermarket chickpeas

¼ Teaspoon Cream of tartar

100 g Caster sugar (superfine sugar)

100 g Ground almonds (I use Tesco's)

100 g Icing sugar

250 g Icing sugar

75 g Vegan margarine

1 Teaspoon Vanilla extract

Splash Plant-based milk (to loosen the buttercream if needed)

Directions

read recipe

Vegan macarons are very tricky to get right the first time. Please read the recipe notes beforehand for best results.

Reducing the aquafaba (do this at least 12 hours in advance):

reduce aquafaba

Weigh the liquid from the 2 cans of chickpeas and place it in a medium-sized pot. Place it over the heat and let it simmer. Weigh it periodically until it reaches half the weight you started with. You should start with roughly 250g of liquid and finish with roughly 125g.

refrigerate aquafaba

When you've reduced the chickpea liquid, let it cool and place it in the fridge in an airtight container overnight.

For the macaron shells:

preheat oven

Preheat your oven to 150°C/300°F (130°C/275°F if using a fan or convection oven). I highly recommend using an oven thermometer for accuracy.

whisk aquafaba

Weigh out 100g of your reduced aquafaba and place it in a scrupulously clean, medium-sized bowl along with the cream of tartar. Using a very clean electric whisk or stand mixer, whisk on high speed until the mixture becomes frothy and goes pale in colour.

add caster sugar to make meringue

With the mixer still going, start adding your caster sugar a little at a time. Keep whisking until the mixture becomes white and glossy and forms stiff peaks, until you can tip the bowl upside-down without it moving. This takes a bit longer than it would with egg whites so be patient and keep whisking!

sift ground almonds and icing sugar

Sift the ground almonds and icing sugar into a separate bowl. Use the back of a spoon to push any lumps of almonds through the sieve.

add to aquafaba mixture

Add half of the icing sugar & ground almonds to your aquafaba mixture and gently fold it in using a spatula. Then fold in the other half.

fold

Keep folding gently until the mixture begins to get a little softer, but be careful not to over-mix. You'll know you're done mixing when you can place a spoonful of the mixture on a flat surface and it slowly flattens out without any lumps or bumps on top. Another way to test is by lifting up a bit of the mixture and drawing a figure of 8 with it. It's ready when you can do this without it breaking.

pipe onto trays

Place the mixture into a piping bag with a round nozzle and pipe 2-inch circles onto your cookie sheet*. You may need 2 trays to do this.

rest the macarons

Slam the tray(s) on a work surface to get rid of any air bubbles, then let them sit at room temperature for 20-30 minutes, or until you can touch them without getting any mixture on your fingers.

bake

Place your macarons on the middle shelf and bake for ~18 minutes. You can check they're ready by wiggling the top of one with your finger. If it moves out of place, it needs to be baked a little longer. I recommend that you only bake one tray at a time unless you can fit the trays on the same shelf.

leave to cool

Once baked, remove them from the oven. When they are fully cooled, gently pull them off of the tray and find matching pairs of similar shape and size. If they stick to the tray once cooled, they are probably underbaked and you can pop them back into a preheated oven for a few more minutes.

For the buttercream filling:

mix buttercream ingredients

Mix the icing sugar, vegan margarine and vanilla extract in a large bowl until smooth. If necessary, add the plant-based milk to help loosen it a little. Once mixed, use an electric whisk to mix until pale and fluffy.

pipe buttercream onto macaron half

Pipe a small amount of buttercream onto the centre of a macaron. Sandwich it together with another macaron, using a gentle twisting motion to prevent it from overflowing.

repeat

Repeat until all of the macarons have been paired.

refrigerate

Store macarons in the fridge, in an airtight container, for up to 2 days after baking. When ready to eat, let them sit at room temperature for around 10 minutes (they taste better this way), then enjoy.

Nutrition

• Serving Size: 1 macaron with buttercre
• Calories: 132 kcal
• Total Fat: 5 g
• Sodium: 25 mg
• Total Carbohydrate: 20 g
• Total Sugars: 20 g
• Protein: 1 g