chocolate macaroons

making cheesecake and creme patissiere means lots of left over egg whites, and what better way to use these up than with the little delights that are chocolate macaroons? exactly.

this recipe makes about 100 rounds, so 50 macaroons if you do small blobs (about 3cm across) or you can make bigger rounds (about 5cm across).

Ingredients

500g icing sugar

250g ground almonds

50g cocoa

50g caster sugar

8 large egg whites

Filling

180ml double cream

300g dark chocolate (70% minimum)

90g unsalted butter

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C, with the shelves in the middle

2. Line baking trays with baking paper; I only have two trays so I just cut out lots of sheets so I could pipe out the mixture all at once and then just swap the sheets over once one batch was cooked

3. Into a large bowl sift the icing sugar and cocoa powder, then add the ground almonds

4. Using a food mixer whisk the egg whites until half-stiff, then gradually add the caster sugar, continuing to whisk until the egg whites are stiff, but not dry (do the old 'if I turn the bowl upside down over my head does it fall on me' trick...)

5. Gradually add the dry mixture, gently folding it into the whites until just combined

6. Fit an icing bag with a 1cm piping nozzle, twist and peg the end and prop up in a pint glass

7. Spoon some mixture into the piping bag, enough to be getting along with but not so much that it sqoodges over the top when you try to grasp it...that's just wasteful

8. Pipe your rounds onto the baking paper - you could draw circles out first if you are not 100% confident. To get smooth tops I hold the nozzle to the paper at an angle, which makes the mixture smoodge together in a nice smooth topped round

9. Leave the rounds to stand for 20 minutes; this lets them form a skin on the top which makes them crunchy on top and chewy underneath - just right

10. Bake for 12-14 minutes, until dry on top but chewy underneath

11. Remove from the baking sheets to cooling racks, do this as soon as possible or they may stick a bit too much to the paper

12. Whilst cooking/cooling the macaroons make your filling of chocolate ganache buy heating all ingredients in a pan on a low heat; remove when the chocolate is just melted and whisk to thicken. Leave this to cool - it will become much thicker once cooled don't worry

13. When all is cool, pair up similar sized rounds and sandwich them together with the chocolate ganache

14. Eat them.