Malted Chocolate Macarons with Dark Chocolate Ganache

Directions

1. Make your own almond flour by grinding raw almonds, you can blanch the almonds before grinding, I used them raw. Just pulse almonds, icing sugar, cocoa powder and the malt powder in a food processor until they are finely ground. It is important to pulse otherwise they will release oils and become almond butter. Once it has become a fine powder, sift this mixture into a clean bowl. It is important to sift. You will be left with about 3 teaspoons of mixture in the sieve. Discard it.
2. In a large clean bowl (make sure it is clean and dry, free of grease) add your room temperature egg whites, a pinch of salt and start whisking at a slow speed using a hand mixer or a stand mixer (you may do this by hand but I will suggest using an electric mixer if you have one)
3. Once the mixture is frothy, add the castor sugar slowly and keep whisking at a medium speed. Once all the castor sugar is added, crank up the speed to high and whisk until you get still peaks. Add the vanilla extract halfway through. It took me a total of 6 minutes and 45 seconds to reach stiff peak, I used this blender. If you lift the whisk and the peak of your meringue stays intact and doesn’t swoop, you have reached stiff peak.
4. Now add a third of the dry mixture into the meringue and fold it in using a spatula, do not stir, fold. Once it is mixed in, add another third, repeat folding and once that is mixed in, add the remaining dry ingredients.
5. IMPORTANT: Begin folding, now, using your spatula go around the bowl and then through the mixture, gently continue folding and after every 6-8 folds lift your spatula and check the consistency of the batter. It should flow easily like a thin ribbon (YES, a thin flat ribbon) and you should be able to draw an 8 in a continuous flow. When you achieve this stage, stop mixing. Transfer this mixture into a piping bag.
6. On a flat, good quality baking sheet, put a piece of parchment paper, now pipe dollops of this macaron batter. You can use a macaron template to get even circles or just eyeball it. According to the size of your macaron, leave some space between the dollops. Once all the mixture has been piped, bang your baking sheet and let the macarons settle.
7. Set these trays aside to dry. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 150C.
8. Once your macarons are dry, it will take around 10-45 minutes depending on the humidity of your kitchen. You can check the done-ness by slightly touching your macaron and it won’t stick to your finger.
9. Bake these macarons for 15-20 minutes. At 150 it takes that time, in my oven. To check if they are done, they will have the feet and if you slightly touch the top of the shell, the feel will not be wobbly.
10. Once they are done, remove from the oven and leave them to cool completely on the tray. Once cooled you can gently remove them from the parchment paper.

Prepare the filling:

Heat your cream in the microwave, once it starts to simmer, add the chocolate and salt. Leave it for 2-3 minutes, then stir to combine. Leave to cool. Refrigerate until it reaches pipable/spreadable consistency.

Assembling:

1. Match the cookies according to size, pipe a generous amount of the ganache and sandwich them.
2. Refrigerate the cookies for about 2 hours minimum to have the best consistency.

ENJOY!