Pistachio Macarons

Honestly I never tried macarons before. But I´ve seen so many beautiful pictures of these little french cookies all over the internet that I felt tempted to try.
This ones were my first try. I followed a basic recipe of Tartelette. You should go there, she has amazing recipes and beautiful pictures. And of course her macarons always look so perfect, that I thought if I had to follow a recipe then might as well be one from there.
For the filling i used a simple vanilla cream. I am not a big fan of buttercream, so I went for something simpler.

Of course they didn´t came out all pretty! But i would say that 90% of them looked like this ones in the picture. I guess it takes practice to make them look perfect and all of the same size.

Pistachio Macarons with Vanilla cream

Ingredients:

3 egg whites, left overnight at room temperature (aged)

30 gr of granulated sugar

200 gr of powder sugar

55 gr of finely ground almonds

55 gr of finely ground pistachios

Green food die (I didn´t use any, hence my macarons didn´t come out very green...)

Sift the powder sugar, almonds and pistachios in order to get rid of any lumps.

In a bowl, with a mixer, whip the egg whites until foamy. Then add the granulated sugar and continue whipping until you have a glossy stiff merengue.

Add slowly the sifted sugar mixture to the egg whites, folding gently. Do not over mix or this can ruin the consistency of the merengue. 

Fill a pastry bag with a large plain tip, and pipette the merengue in an oven tray covered with baking paper. Try to pipette the same amount, in order to have equal size macarons in the end. To me this was a bit hard but I guess it requires a bit of training!

Leave the macarons sit for around an hour, until they spread a bit and form a harden shell. 

Heat the oven to 150°C. Place the tray with the macarons in the oven for approximately 15 to 20 minutes. I guess this also takes a bit of trial and error according to your oven. 

After this time take them out of the oven and let it cool down. don´t let them sit on the tray too much or they will become soggy. You can store them in a air tight container before filling them.

For the Filling:

150 mL Milk

1 egg slightly beaten

20 gr of sugar

1 vanilla pod

1 teaspoon of corn starch (Maizena)

Cut open the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds placing them in the milk. Take the milk to medium heat with the sugar and vanilla, the egg slightly beaten and the corn starch well dissolved.

Mix it in well while heating until the cream thickens. Let it cool down before using on the macarons.

With a piping bag (or a spoon), place the cool filling on one of the macarons flat side, and place another macaron on the top. Do not press them down or you might break them.

I think that the day after they taste even better...