Pomegranate Macarons

To be honest, I have better luck with no hollows using the Italian meringue method. However, it's much faster for me to use the French meringue method, so when I'm lazy/ want to crank some macarons out, I use this method. From start to clean up, it takes me about 1.5hrs. 

Macaron Shells
I use the same ratios and process that Love and Macarons uses (http://loveandmacarons.blogspot.com/2014/01/vanilla-bean-macarons-with-light-and.html).

For about 10 1.5 inch macarons:
46 g almond flour (sift, no big almond pieces)
41.66 g powdered sugar (give or take, since kitchen scales don't have this precision)
35 g egg whites
35 g granulated sugar

1. Oven to 300F (or 325F, see below). Measure out and sift your powdered sugar and almond flour. Whisk together and set aside.

2. Make your meringue. Beat/ whisk your egg whites until frothy and start to incorporate the granulated sugar a bit a time. Beat until stiff peaks. If you want food coloring, add it at the soft peaks stage.

3. Okay. You should look up macaronage (folding of ingredients) on Youtube if you don’t know how already. 

In summary: add in dry ingredients to the meringue, a third at a time until mixed. And folding by basically scraping along the edge of the bowl and then pressing down along the center in sort of a J shape. Do this until you have a lava like consistency, where you can pick up your spatula and the batter will drop down in a ribbon. My test is to bang the bowl on the table and see if the ribbon that just fell incorporates back into the main blob—if it does, it’s ready. Otherwise, I do a few more folds. Put into a piping bag.

4. Pipe out your macarons. I use a silpat (would highly recommend). Rap the baking sheet against the table a few times.

5. I hate waiting for the shells to dry, so I cheat and actually put the oven temp at 325. Then I open the oven and hold the tray in the oven, rotating it every 10 seconds or so for about a minute. Then again for another 30 seconds. This quickly dries out the shells :p. 
You want to be able to touch the shell and have it not be sticky.
Then I drop down the oven temp back to 300 (it’s about this low anyways since the door has been open.).

6. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Pomegrante Curd
For the pomegrante curd, I use Macaronguy’s recipe (https://macaronguy.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/strawberry-curd/)

I LOVE using curds as fillings. They’re so much less finicky than ganaches or buttercreams and are very fruity tasting. I follow his recipe to a T.

1 cup fruit of choice (this doesn't have to be super precise, since you can always just reduce down your mixture for a longer or shorter time)
[for these pomegrante ones, I used the juice from half a pomegrante]
50 g granulated sugar
16 g cornstarch
1 egg yolk
10ish g lemon juice
28.5 g butter

1. Extract juice from your fruit and strain. Heat up until simmering.

2. Lightly beat the egg yolk and add sugar and sifted corn starch. I also just add the lemon juice, so that I can make a nice non-lumpy mixture.

3. While whisking, slowly add the heated up juice onto the egg/sugar/cornstarch/lemon. You're tempering the egg to prevent it from scrambling. Once it's fully incorporated, add the mixture back into the pot and stir constantly on medium. Eventually, it'll start to thicken. I usually thicken until it's a nice paste.

4. Take off the heat and stir in the butter, a little a time.

5. I transfer to a piping bag and chill it in the fridge for a short while to firm up before piping onto my macaron shells.

To add the stripes, add some food coloring to a small amount of vodka to make a paint like consistency. Vodka dries very quickly, so it's optimal. Food coloring with just water will end up being sticky and won't dry fully. Brush on the stripes (just buy a paintbrush and clean it well before using).

Let the macarons rest in an airtight container in the fridge overnight for optimal chewiness! :D
Gluck!

-Mario