Ginger Macarons with Orange Sugar Buttercream

My first stop for baking with my orange sugar simply had to be buttercream frosting to pair with ginger macarons.

 Baking with a new ingredient is always so much fun. Lately I've been in a macaron making mood. Ever since Christmas and making macarons with my mother I've been wanting to make more and keep perfecting this process.

It seems like every time I post a macaron recipe I get a lot of comments on the post about being scared to make a macaron! Let me clear this up: making a macaron is NOT hard. It's actually relatively simple, and takes very little hands on time! Can you whip egg whites until they have soft peaks? Can you sift and fold? Can you pour out a tester teaspoon to see if the batter will flatten slightly? Yes? Then you're going to be just fine!

If it makes you feel any better, the vast majority of the macarons I see sold around DC aren't done perfectly either. Their batter is undermixed. How can I tell? The lumpy tops are a dead give away. The batter never flattened properly. I have made that mistake myself. If you look at my chinese five spice macarons you can see that they are actually just slightly under-mixed. Is it a learning process? Sure! But so was cake right? Or making caramel? or Toffee?

Want me to talk you into it? Shoot me an email! Trust me, you'll be just fine! .....well.....one weird rule: if it's humid, don't bother. At least that's what I hear. I've just always followed that rule. One of these days I'll be a rebel and make macarons during a horrible rain storm.

Now as for using my orange sugar to make a buttercream, this took a bit of pondering. I had to put forth some effort to grind my sugar into powdered sugar. It took longer than I wanted it to. I'm not the most patient of people. Quality time with my food processor is not really what I look for in a Tuesday night. I succeeded. The orange sugar will in fact, after a while, turn into a powdered sugar that can be used in buttercream! So happy!

Hope you enjoy this little recipe, and more importantly I hope that if macarons scare you, you'll face the fear. They are a wonderful cookie!

Ginger Macarons

100 g. egg whites

25 g. white sugar

200 g. powdered sugar

110 g. ground almond meal

1 tsp. ground ginger
dried orange zest (optional)

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 

In a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the egg whites into a foam, gradually adding the sugar. Continue to beat into a meringue. 

Sift together powdered sugar, ginger, and almond meal to remove any clumps. Gently sift into meringue gradually folding in, usually as few strokes as possible. Test a teaspoon of batter by pouring onto a plate. If it flatten slightly, you’re ready. If it remains stiff, give it a few more strokes. Err on the side of under-mixed.

Moving quickly fill a disposable pastry bag with the macaron batter with a 3/4 inch wide cut end. Pipe small rounds one inch in diameter and one inch apart, onto the baking sheets. Allow to rest for half an hour. Sprinkle the tops with dried orange zest.

Preheat the oven to 300. 

Bake for 15-20 minutes. My experience is that if the macarons are hard to remove from the paper, they need more time to bake. Allow to cool on the pan and then remove. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator until ready to fill. 

Orange Sugar Buttercream 

1/2 cup butter
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup confectioner’s sugar

1 cup powdered orange sugar (pulse sugar cubes in a food processor)

Whip with a paddle attachment: butter, and vanilla until creamy then whip in the sugars.

Orange Sugar

Orange flavored sugar is wonderful accompaniment to a cup of tea or way to perk up a favorite recipe. Orange sugar cubes would be a simple but impressive addition to high tea, or bottled gift for a tea lover. 

For a while now I've been wanting to make flavored sugars (it counts as a condiment for tea right?) and this weekend I finally had all of half an hour to try it out, in between the farmers markets and a glass blowing class (yes, I went to a glass blowing class and it was SO fun). I tried to do some reading on how to make flavored sugars and it turns out....there really isn't any. Okay, there is, but it can be summed up in a few words "add zest to sugar and let it sit for a few weeks." I actually did that a few weeks ago, and was not incredibly impressed by the results. Sure, the sugar had a little hint of orange...but it just wasn't enough. So, I had a little epiphany. You have to make sugar cubes by adding liquid so why not use orange juice!

To make regular sugar cubes you add a tablespoon of liquid to a cup of sugar and mix it so it feels like wet sand, shape it, and bake at 200 degrees to dry them out. The principle was so simple! So I tried it out using orange juice instead of water. I added some zest for kicks and giggles. The cubes were lovely, but didn't really have the zing I was looking for. It was time for round two: why not use an orange juice reduction? Et voila!

I'm already in LOVE with adding this orange sugar to my pomegranate tea, and all this week I'm going to be using it to bake into recipes! So excited to experiment with my newest ingredient!

Cheers!

Can be used for:

• orange clove snickerdoodles
• orange sugar buttercream

Orange Sugar

1/4 cup orange juice
1 tsp. dried orange peel or 1 tblsp. fresh orange zest
1 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 200.

In a small pan over medium heat, simmer orange juice and zest. Cook down until the mixture measure one tablespoon.

In a stand mixer, on a medium speed add sugar and a few drops of the orange juice reduction at a time. From here you can get creative. Using molds, ice cube trays or, as I did, shape into a rectangular disk about a fourth of an inch thick and place on a  cookie sheet, cutting into cubes and gently spreading out to about two inches apart. Bake for at least 15 minutes.** Allow to cool completely and store in an airtight container.

**I GENTLY flipped my sugar cubes after about 13 minutes so that the bottom of the cube was exposed and able to dry more completely, but I did loose a few sugar cubes in this manner. Be very gentle!

Disclaimer: My understanding through learning to can, is that 200 degree cooking kills bacteria and that sugar is a preserver in any event. So long as the cubes are thoroughly dried out I can't foresee the cubes going bad. Sugar and dehydrated orange juice seems like it should have a healthy shelf life. I'm keeping a few cubes in my cupboard to see if anything goes amiss with them. I'll update this post when I have a conclusion. If you're leery store the cubes in the freezer. :)