Sainsbury's Raspberry Macaroons

Macaroons are everywhere at the moment and Sainsbury's have cleverly cottoned onto this and produced an easy do-it-yourself kit to make them at home. I tried the raspberry flavoured kit but there is also a chocolate macaroon kit available.

I love macaroons. I've tried to make them and whilst my own efforts have tasted great they've never looked like the perfect macaroons. In the past I have religiously followed recipes [see Stella's Macaroon recipe] but they take a lot of time and effort and for someone like me who likes quick results, not always practical.

So, enter the Sainsbury's Raspberry Macaroon kit. It comes with two sachets, one with the macaroon ingredients and one for the icing and a ready made piping bag. All I needed to add was two egg whites, 50g of butter and 1 tbsp of milk.

The kit was really easy to follow, for the macaroons:



- Whisk the egg white for two minutes
- Fold in the macaroon ingredients
- Fill the piping bag with the mixture and pipe small circles onto a baking sheet
                        [make sure to lightly grease your baking tray]
- Put in a preheated oven for 20 minutes on 50 degrees C
- After the 20 minutes turn the oven up to 160 degrees C and bake for a further 15 minutes

For the icing:

- Beat 50g of butter until pale and soft
- Add in the icing sugar and milk and beat until combined
                           [A tablespoon of milk made the icing very runny so depending on preference use less]

Then all you have to do once the macaroons have cooled is sandwich two together with some icing.

How easy was it? Very easy.
Would I use the kit again? No.

The macaroons were a lovely colour and a lovely shape but real macaroons have a shiny top and a 'foot' - where the underside looks kind of frothy. Usually my macaroons always fail in keeping their colour once cooked, going from a bright pink to a pale peach so it was nice to see them coming out a bright pink.
In terms of taste the texture was very coarse and both the macaroons and the icing were very sweet and the raspberry was overpowering. The macaroons got chewy very quickly and the icing didn't set at all (see note about icing further up) which was disappointing.

The macaroons will spread a little so it's best to only pipe small circles onto your baking sheet. I did this and got around 30 single macaroon shells.

It's a great kit if you're new to macaroons or want to make some for a party. If you want the real thing either buy them or if you really want to make your own try the recipe on the BraveTart blog by Stella.

Having said all that the kit does only cost £2 and so is worth a try if only for the price.

In summary:

- Look good
- Too sweet
- Not true macaroons