I weighed and sieved the icing sugar and the ground almonds. I noticed that the Lidl ground almonds had lots of bits of almonds left. I decided to weigh the mixture and found I was 25g short, of ground almond. No wonder my mixture wasn't exactly thick! I sieved more ground almond till I got to 25g and added it in.
The next part was ensuring the moisture was out of the icing sugar/ground almond mixture. I put it on a tray in the oven at 50C, stirring it up every now and then. The end result was a very fine powder almost like fluffy ash.
With the egg white, I decided I was going to beat those suckers into absolute submission. I kept going until these guys were crazy stiff, like I never saw before.
I also kept the kitchen nice and cold.
The result of all this was a macaron paste that was much thicker and didn't spread out all over the place when I piped them on to the tray.
When I cooked them in the oven I managed to get the foot, although they did sink down a bit. The taste was good though. Crunchy in the right places.
The next thing to get right is going to be the oven. My first batch was a little 'toasted' and went from white to tanned. I turned down the oven for the next batch and they were less tanned.
Overall, I feel this is a progression at least. I'll keep the macarons and check out the taste over the next couple of days.
