Winter is soon upon us and you know what that means – hot chocolate season! These Hot Cocoa Macarons are delicious and almost too beautiful to eat! The filling is made of a homemade marshmallow fluff that will have your friends and family craving more!
Hot Cocoa Macarons
Ingredients
Macaron Shell
- 100 g egg whites, room temp (about 3 large eggs)
- 1 cup fine almond flour, sifted (110g)
- 1 1/2 cup powdered sugar, sifted (190g)
- 2 tsp unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted (10g)
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar (60g)
- 1/4 tsp cream of tartar
- 4 oz semi-sweet chocolate, for drizzling
Marshmallow Filling
- 2 large egg whites (66g)
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar (130g)
Instructions
- Sift the almond flour, powdered sugar, and cocoa powder together into a medium bowl, and then whisk to thoroughly combine, and set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk the egg whites on medium-medium/high speed until they are foamy, then add the cream of tartar. On medium high speed, gradually add the granulated sugar, pausing if necessary to scrape down the sides, it can be easy for sugar to get stuck to the side of the bowl and not get whisked. Once all the sugar has been added, turn the mixer up to full speed and whisk until it's forming soft peaks.
- Gently add half the dry ingredients to the egg whites and fold in by hand with a spatula. Repeat with the second half. With each addition, it will start out very dry and sticky, but keep folding and it will incorporate. Once all the ingredients are added, continue to fold until you can form an unbroken figure 8 with the batter as it drips off the spatula (this is a classic macaron batter test). Once you reach this point, stop mixing, or else you risk over mixing.
- Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking sheet ( recommend the amazon basics ones that have the macaron template printed right on them). If using parchment paper, you can print out macaron templates to place underneath to making piping easier. Don't worry about removing the templates, as macarons don't bake at a high enough temperature to burn paper (thanks Ray Bradbury!)
- Add the batter to a piping bag with a large round tip (like a Wilton 1A). Carefully pipe 1 inch rounds onto your prepared baking sheet. This recipe makes 30 filled macarons, which is 60 halves, so you will need 2 prepared baking sheets if making the full recipe. Once piped, lift the baking sheet off the counter by a couple of inches and drop down onto the counter a couple of times to help air rise to the surface, and then carefully with a tooth pick pop any bubbles you can see in the macarons.
- Let the macarons sit at room temp for 30-40 minutes, until they've formed a skin and you can touch them and they feel dry. While they are resting, preheat the oven to 300°F. Once ready to bake, bake the macarons for 13-15 minutes. To test if they're done, gently touch the top of one and it shouldn't move independently from their feet when touched (i.e. no jiggle). Be careful not to overbake, it can be difficult to tell from the color with a chocolate macaron when they are done.
- Remove from the oven and let cool completely to room temp before removing from the baking sheet. Once cooled, carefully peel off the parchment or silicone, and match them up as best you can (there will always be some minor size differences) and flip over half of them to prepare for filling.
- To make the marshmallow filling, construct a double boiler with the water at a simmer, and whisk the egg whites and sugar together until frothy and the sugar has dissolved. Pour the mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer, and this time with the paddle attachment beat on high speed until glossy with stiff peaks.
- Transfer the marshmallow to a piping bag with the same round tip, and pipe a neat dollop onto the half of the macarons that you flipped over. Once piped, sandwich the top and bottom together.
- Optionally, melt the 4 oz of semi-sweet chocolate and lightly drizzle over tops of the macarons. Allow a few minutes to let the chocolate cool and set. I usually say keep macarons in the fridge, but the fridge does weird things to prevously-melted chocolate, so it's best to keep these in an airtight container at room temp.
- Enjoy!
