Valentines Baking | Blueberry Macarons

Happy Valentines day! 

If you follow my Instagram you'll have seen a piccy of mine and Craig's lovely macarons the other day! I thought I'd save this recipe for today so that if you have forgotten to buy your Valentine a present you can make some, or if you want to make a big batch and eat them all at once whilst watching chick flicks you can do that too!

I followed this recipe which  is the most straightforward one I could find but added blueberry to the butter icing and purple food colouring to make the look pretty!

I'll re-write the instructions under the pictures for you so you know what's going on step by step. Enjoy!

You will need:

2 mixing bowls

a sieve

a set of scales

whisk

greaseproof paper

a piping bag

Ingredients:

100g icing sugar

100g ground almonds

2 medium eggs

food colouring paste

pinch of salt

55g caster sugar

for the filling: 150g unsalted butter

75g icing sugar

blueberries

Preheat your oven to 140C/ 300F for a gas oven and 160C/ 325F for a fan oven

Sieve the icing sugar and ground almonds into a bowl and mix carefully.

Separate the eggs and whisk the whites in a bowl with a pinch of salt. (Just a note you will need an electric whisk, I didn't have one and me and Craig took turns to whisk it and it took about 40 minutes and two dead arms...) When you've reached a point where the egg whites are forming soft peaks you can then add the food colouring. Make sure it's a paste and not a liquid formula or it will ruin the consistency of the meringue. 

Then gradually add the icing sugar and almond mix in bit by bit folding it in to the egg whites.

Pour the mixture into your piping bag and carefully pipe the mixture in to circles on the greaseproof paper. Try and make sure they are as even as possible, as you can see mine aren't the prettiest bunch, but this was my first go...

To make the filling mix the butter and icing sugar together and either blend up the blueberries in a blender or if you don't have a blender, just rough chop them, and then mix them in with the butter icing.

Sandwhich the meringues together with a teaspoon of filling between and twist them into place. Then you're done! ENJOY :)

Georgia x

Have you done any Valentines baking?

Want to see more of my cooking posts?

click here to see my homemade granola

or here to see my spinach and ricotta haddock