Nigella's Chewy Almond Macaroons v2

A few months ago, I posted an entry about these and I made the macaroons again today.

I've now reverted to Nigella's original (sort of) recipe which seemed to work better this time around - I'm not sure why.

The recipe I used today was as follows:

250g ground almonds
250g fine sugar
2 large egg whites
1 teaspoon mixed spice (for sweets)

Method:

Make a meringue in the usual way, fold in ground almonds. Put batter into piping bag and pipe onto cookie trays. Bake at 190 to 200 degrees Celsius (depending on your oven) for about 10 minutes. The final product when cooled will be chewy in the middle.

My previous modified recipe yielded a rather rollable dough which didn't happen this time. It was quite gooey and it struck me, after having seen Jamie Oliver do it so many times, that I could simply put the batter into a plastic bag and then pipe it out onto the baking tray, rather than to shape the balls by hand.

It took almost no time at all to finish. You don't need to be very fancy with the piping because they batter loses its shape and forms a round biscut at the end of the baking process. Because of this, leave lots of room between each macaroon so they don't stick together. They're also paler than the earlier version.

I'm quite pleased with the current version and unless you really love the earlier version, I suggest you ditch it for this one.