Burger Macarons

We've just had a lovely bank holiday weekend. We were invited to a BBQ on Sunday, which ended up being a glorious day. Traditionally all bank holidays are soggy affairs leading to large queues at the shopping centre. So it was a nice to be able to eat and drink and chat in the sun. 

In fact, this is one of the reasons why I decided to embark upon the task of creating burger macarons. I thought if play was rained off we could still eat burgers! And I love making macarons. And people love eating them. 

Obviously I didn't invent the novelty macaron. They've looked like burgers forever and you can find a few pictures of other people's versions if you look for them online. I didn't use a tutorial or anything for these though, so I'm going to add a few tips for if you fancy having a go. 

Burger Macarons

The 'bread'

Just make the shells with your favourite macaron method/recipe. Personally I find the Italian meringue method easier to get the correct consistency. A lot of recipes seem to say it should be a magma like texture? That seems a rather bizarre thing to compare your cooking to. I think it looks more like melted marshmallow. It's shiny and pourable but not runny. 

I got the colour by adding some yellow colouring and a little bit of red. I was a pale orangey shade which went a bit darker when baked. I wouldn't add too much though, even plain macarons are quite burger bun like. After I'd piped them, but before they set I sprinkled on some sesame seeds. 

The 'burger'

For the burger I used a chocolate ganache. I left it in the the fridge to harden up a bit, but not completely. I piped globs about the size of a cherry tomato (or a large cherry I suppose?) onto a plate. Then I took each one and placed it between two pieces of cling film and squished it down with the bottom of a glass dish. Using something made of glass made it easier to see when the 'burger' was the right width for the shell. Pressing them down like that also made a nice uneven edge.

The 'cheese'

I didn't make fondant or colour it or anything. I just bought a bar of bright yellow ready to roll icing. I rolled it really thin and cut some squares. Make sure everything is covered in icing sugar or it'll all stick together. eugh. 

Didn't last long!

The 'tomato sauce'

These are pretty time consuming little things to put together so I didn't make this icing either. I used a little tube of writing icing. You know the kind they do for piping 'happy birthday' on a cake? I added a couple of 'drips' where you could see them from the outside of the burger and a little bit in the middle so you would see it when you bit though.

I also added a dab of extra ganache on top of the 'cheese' to make sure the lids stayed on. Once the lids were in position I popped them in the fridge for 24hrs.

Just before the BBQ I wrapped them individually in squares of baking paper so they looked like fast food burgers ready to go.

What do you think? Would you try one?  



Check out this amazing time lapse video my friend made of the BBQ.