I kid you not!
And the best part is that they are made with a simple, cheap, easy to find ingredient. No expensive specialty products or trips to the healthfood store required.
I stumbled across this recipe for eggless vegan meringue made with the liquid from a can of chickpeas instead of egg whites, and immediately my mind went to macarons… because it frequently goes there, in case you hadn’t noticed 😉
I am kinda married to the Italian meringue method for macaron making, so I thought I’d experiment with that, then would play around with the French meringue version if that failed. But it didn’t fail. Not by a long shot! The structure is just perfect – crisp shell and chewy interior, little feet, domed tops. Everything you want in a macaron, but without the eggs 🙂
I had absolutely no idea that the liquid from a can of chickpeas could whip up this this!
As for the flavour, you can’t taste the chickpea liquid at all behind the vanilla, almonds and sugar. It’s amazing!
I do wonder if this would work as well if you soak your own chickpeas – I don’t know whether it’s something in the chickpeas themselves that causes this, but I suspect so… if anyone tries it with liquid from chickpeas you have soaked yourself, I’d love to hear about your results!
Makes 30 filled macarons
I used a little over half the liquid from a 400g (14oz) can
Preparation about 30 minutes
Resting about 20 minutes
Baking 18 minutes per batch
Cooling about an hour
Filling 5 minutes, if using jam or any other premade filling
Ingredients
140g ground almonds
140g powdered (confectioner’s) sugar
100g (8 Tbsp) chickpea canning liquid, room temperature, divided 50/50
1 tsp vanilla paste
100g granulated (white) sugar
40g water
Directions
Prepare 2 parchment lined baking sheets.
Mix the ground almonds and powdered sugar together then grind in a food processor until you have an extra fine texture.
Sift into a large bowl, re-grinding any bigger pieces of almond.
Add 50g chickpea canning liquid and the teaspoon of vanilla paste to the almond mixture and mix thoroughly. Set aside.
In another bowl using an electric hand mixer, or in the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the other 50g chickpea canning liquid. It should at least triple in volume and whip to medium-firm peaks. It will take a lot longer than egg whites to whip up, about 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, put the granulated sugar and water into a small saucepan and heat on medium-low to 118°C (244°F).
While whisking constantly on low speed (to avoid splashing hot syrup), slowly add the cooked sugar mixture to the beaten chickpea canning liquid, pouring it down the inside edge of the bowl. Whisk at high speed until the mixture is cool, about 3 minutes. The mixture should become firm and shiny and you should get a beak when you lift the whisk.
Scrape the meringue onto the almond mixture and incorporate with a rubber or silicone spatula until you have a homogenous batter that runs from the spatula in a thick ribbon. It will not take nearly as long to mix as an egg meringue, so be very careful not to overmix it.
Transfer the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a 7 – 9mm plain tip (this is best done in two batches, so you don’t overfill the bag). Pipe 60 equally sized rounds, about 4cm, in staggered rows onto the prepared sheets. Hold the piping bag upright with the tip just above the sheet and pipe without pulling upwards or swirling in circles, so the batter comes out in a round blob around the tip, and give a little sideways flick at the end to break the stream.
Tap the baking sheet firmly on the bench several times to release air bubbles and obtain a smooth surface. Leave the tray to rest at room temperature for at least 20 minutes until a slight skin forms.
Meanwhile, preheat oven to 150°C (300°F).
Bake the macarons for 18 minutes, one sheet at a time, turning the sheet half-way.
Remove from oven, remove the parchment from the tray with the shells still on it, and place on a cooling rack for at least 30 minutes, until completely cool, then remove macaron shells carefully from the parchment.
Fill as desired (I used strawberry jam), then store in an airtight container in the fridge to mature for at least 24 hours before eating.
pizzarossa 
My mind is blown! I never knew chick pea liquid would whip up like that!
It’s amazing, isn’t it?!!!
YOU ARE AMAZING.
LOL! I’m excited, that’s what I am!
Genius!!!!!!!
Thank you for this inspiration!
Thanks Lou 🙂
Do you think I can use the chickpea canning liquid even to make a chiffon cake? Because if is yes, you made my day!
I’m keen to find out! I have quite a list of things I want to try 🙂
Let me know when you are tried! Thanks a lot!
Love these!! Curious, what brand of vegan granulated sugar and confectioner’s sugar did you use?
Thanks 🙂 As for the sugar – I’m lucky! I live in Switzerland and all our locally produced sugar is beet sugar, which doesn’t go through the bone char filtering process.
I’d love to try this with my soaking liquid but have no idea how much liquid is in a can. Can someone who uses the canned let me know?
In my can, there was about 190g (about 3/4 cup).
Yes, chickpea liquid from home-made chickpeas works. I had to try because I was afraid it was actually BPA or something equally horrible from the can that did the magic.
That’s great to know!
Looks great. You are welcome to join the FB group that is dedicated to develop recipes that are based on this miracle juice (we call it aquafaba)
You will find vegan royal icing, marshmallows, macarons, macaroons, angel cake and much more:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/VeganMeringue/
Thanks for that info – I am on my way! 🙂
Hi there. These look amazing! So anxious to try them. In my country, all chickpeas canned in salted water…was you water salt-free?
I don’t have a can on hand to check, but I would guess there was some salt in the water. As long as it doesn’t taste salty, it should be fine. The liquid in the can smelled quite strongly of chickpea, but once it was mixed with sugar and vanilla, it was not discernible at all. My kids never knew, and they are my harshest critics!
Reblogged this on newbbeautyblogger and commented:
Yummm
Thanks for the reblog 🙂
Wow these look great, I will be trying this soon! H x
http://www.hermionespantry.wordpress.com
Thanks 🙂 Let me know how they turn out! 🙂
When do I need to add coloring? Thank you 🙂
I usually add colouring to the almond/sugar mixture – powder straight away, liquid/gel with the 50g chickpea liquid 🙂
Hi Rachel,
Thanks for sharing the amazing vegan macaroons. 🙂 They look so good. I find that macaroons are very sweet, would it be possible to reduce the sugar? Have you tried making less sweet macaroons? Would appreciate your advice.
Thank you 🙂
Hi Madeline 🙂
I’ve never tried reducing the sugar because I’ve always been told the ratios were all-important. One thing that might help, though, is that the filling makes a huge difference to sweetness. A tart curd or unsweetened jam can help with that balance. But you have certainly given me food for thought, so I’m going to try replacing some of the powdered sugar for something else in a batch to see if I can dial the sweetness back a bit. I’ll let you know how it goes!
Thanks for stopping by and bringing up such an interesting challenge! 🙂
Hi I followed the receipe however the vegan macaroons did not work, they were hard and did not raise. Also the instructions are not very clear when adding 140g powdered (confectioner’s) sugar
100g (8 Tbsp) chickpea canning liquid, room temperature, divided 50/50 ?? Also when do you add 100g granulated (white) sugar.
Can we have step by step instructions.
Thank you
Hi Gita,
Sorry you had problems – if they didn’t rise it could have been that the liquid wasn’t beaten firmly enough, or that the batter was overmixed. It says in the instructions that the powdered sugar gets mixed with the ground almonds before grinding, and that 50g of the liquid gets added to that, then 50g of the liquid is beaten, and also that the granulated sugar gets mixed with water and heated. If you’ll wait a couple of weeks, I have a comprehensive macaron guide coming, with video and loads of pictures.
Hi pizzarossa- I find your instructions very clear a different after making French meringue macarons close to 100 times I’m really to attempt the Italian meringue method. Wish me luck!! I will be reporting my results in the Vegan Meringue Facebook group.
Oooh, that’s exciting! We often have a preferred method and the other looks scary (I am still absolutely terrified of the French meringue method!!!) so I’m sending you all good vibes for your go at this method! 🙂
Great yes that would be much helpful.
Hi could you not provide a step by step document ? That would help as the above is not too clear. Thanks
Hi Gita, the new post with lots of step-by-step photos etc will be up very, very soon – check back next week 🙂
Hi great as need to make some soon for a special event and want all the step’s this time so do not get it wrong. Look forward to your post by 5th Nov. 🙂
Hi Gita,
The post us up (https://pizzarossa.me/2015/10/27/a-step-by-step-guide-to-macarons-using-the-italian-meringue-method/) – the process is exactly the same for vegan macs, so where it refers to egg whites you just replace it with aquafaba (chickpea liquid). I hope it helps!
Hi thanks. Hope that you will have a specific one for the veg macs soon.
Hi Gita,
I’m sorry, I won’t be doing a separate post because it really is exactly the same process – all you do is replace the words “egg whites” with “aquafaba”. If you have any specific questions about the process, please feel free to ask.
Thanks !
Hi, Just wanted to ask if you used the liquid directly or reduce it first? All the other recipes that I have been seeing reduce and then use. Let me know asap. Kinda urgent!
Hi Ashima, I use it directly out of the can. I guess it depends on the brand a bit, but I’ve made it with two different brands with the same great result.
OMG! I just made these and I’m never going to another recipe ever. Also, I too am married to Italian method and make it all the time. I did reduce the liquid a bit to use it. A tip for anyone in humid areas is probably to dehydrate the shells for half an hour in the oven, on the lowest temperature.
Thank you so much for the recipe!
I’m so happy to hear that, Ashima! 😀
Holy moly I just made these using your recipe after a massively failing using Orgran Egg Replacer. I can’t believe chick pea liquid actually worked!!! Thank you for sharing!
I am so glad to hear you had success with the recipe 🙂
Thanks again for the recipe! I’ve re-blogged it as well: http://crissascakecorner.blogspot.sg/2016/03/vegan-egg-free-macarons.html
Thanks for letting me know, Crissa! Love your post – it put a huge smile on my face 😀 BTW, I tried leaving a comment but I don’t know if it worked… I always get an infinite loop of “publish” windows when I try to comment on blogspot posts…
Aw thanks 🙂 I’m not sure why there’s a bug in the comments section of my blog! Thanks for reading!
Thanks for the recipe! I’ve made vegan macs before but tried it with this recipe this time. They completely pancaked before I even took them out of the oven! Is it really 300F? Other recipes bake the vegan macs at a much lower temp.
Yes, the same temp as non-vegan macs. I’m not sure why yours would have flopped like that – maybe something else is different?
This is the second attempt in two weeks that I have tried making these and both times have been an epic fail. They keep turning out like a flat bubbly cracker. I was extra careful to not over mix this time and my texture was definitely better than last time but the results were still the same. Any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong? I followed every step to a tee.
It could be the aquafaba – are you using canned, or your own chickpea soaking water? I know a lot of people struggle to find one that works – if it’s watery you can try reducing it so you get a more stable meringue. You can also try adding a pinch of cream of tartar to the meringue.