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This is a recipe from the amazing Ottolenghi cookbook I received as a Christmas present. If you like peanut butter, you'd love these: half chewy, half crunchy shells scattered with roast peanut pieces, sandwiched together with dulce de leche/confiture de lait, more roast peanuts and a big pinch of sea salt crystals.





Firstly, sorry for not providing US conversions. I know that there are lots of people who successfully make these macaroons using cup measurements - but the recipe requires such a level of accuracy that I simply don't understand how it could be achieved without a decent digital kitchen scale. 10g out one way or another, and you would see a difference. If you are serious about pâtisserie it's a worthwhile investment! Not that they're too expensive.

The 'shells' of the macaroons are made from:

2 egg whites
110g icing sugar / confectioners sugar
60g ground almonds
40g caster sugar / superfine sugar
20g unsalted, roasted peanuts, roughly chopped [the only unsalted peanuts I could find weren't roasted, so I put them in the oven for a bit until they were, then chopped them in my food processor.]

You can use regular, refined sugars, but when making any caramelly/chocolatey/coffee type macaroon, I like to use golden icing sugar and golden caster sugar to add both a more appropriate colour and a slighly fudgier depth of flavour...like this.



Method for Shells

1) Grind the almonds and icing sugar up together as finely as you possibly can for a good 5 minutes in a food processor, then sieve them through the finest sieve you can get your hands on. Set aside.
2) Prepare two baking sheets by lining them with non-stick baking parchment.
3) Whip up the two egg whites with a balloon whisk or in a stand mixer until they form soft peaks. Add the caster sugar in 2 additions and beat until you have a thick but not totally stiff or - heaven forbid - dry meringue.
4) Using a metal spoon or a plastic spatula, fold the ground sugar/nuts into the meringue in two additions - a step known as 'macaroner' the mixture. You must be deft, but not overly rough, and mix just until the batter is homogenous. It should be shiny, quite stiff and totally smooth.
5) Pipe or drop small, even rounds of the mixture onto your prepared baking sheets. They should be roughly 2cm in diameter (just less than 1 inch) and far enough apart to allow for some spreading.
6) Sprinkle on the chopped roast peanuts.
7) Leave the shells to sit for at least 15 minutes. Preheat the oven to 160*C.
8) Bake the shells for around 11 minutes, until you can lift them cleanly off their baking sheet with a spatula. Leave to cool completely.

To make the filling...

Mix together:
30 natural roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
100g dulce de leche/confiture de lait



Then add a good pinch of flaky sea salt (e.g. Maldon salt) and taste. You want a pronounced salty taste, like peanut butter or salted caramel, but go cautiously.

If you wanted you could make your own caramel from scratch. But dulce de leche is such a perfect consistency for macaroon filling that it's up to you to decide whether it's worth it or not. I don't think it's as tasty as a traditional caramel, but it's still very good.

Le montage

Sandwich together the shells by piping or dropping a blob of filling onto one, topping it with another, and very gently pressing down so that the filling reaches the edges, but doesn't splurge out, or go so flat that you can't see it between the shells.

Et voilà!