Experiments: Cornmeal Macarons

In my quest to make nut-free macarons, I found a recipe that uses cornmeal instead of ground almonds! And after two more failed attempts — they were really bad, at the white chocolate macarons I decided to give the cornmeal macarons a go. I used masa harina for my cornmeal, I found it was very close to the texture of ground almond. If you can’t find masa harina, you can use medium ground cornmeal.

Ingredients:

• 58 g masa harina
• 115 g icing sugar
• 4 g oil (I used canola oil)
• 72 g egg whites
• 36 g sugar
• 1 g salt

Procedure:

Whip egg whites while adding sugar and salt to stiff peaks. When it starts to hold its own peak and creates a beak on your whisks, fold in the dry ingredients.

Here is where it gets tricky, I actually counted my folding. Twelve strokes. After the dry ingredients are incorporated, I counted twelve strokes while pressing some of the batter on the side of the bowl, scraping it and folding it again. The batter should look shiny and should look like oozing lava. Pipe it into your prepared tray. Tap tray against the counter. Leave to air dry. *You might need the help of a fan if it’s humid.

Preheat oven to 300F. Check your macarons if the tops and sides are dry to the touch. When it’s ready, pop in the oven and cross your fingers.

I filled half of these macarons with straight up blueberry jam. And the other half I mixed the blueberry jam with some white chocolate. You can make your own variation for filling these macarons! Enjoy!

UPDATE ON LAST EXPERIMENT: Still failing! LOL Hopefully I will find a breakthrough on the recipe soon!