'Winged' Sesame Macaron

In case you were wondering, no, these macarons don't have wings.  I said 'winged' because that's how they were made--I just winged them.

There was a small tub of leftover egg whites that's been sitting in the fridge for a while that needed to be used up.  I decided to whip up some Italian meringue.  There was a base for Baked Alaska sitting in the freezer that needed to be frosted, and I could always use some practice.

The meringue turned out great.  I piped spikes of them onto the ice cream on the base to cover the entire thing--maybe dessert for tomorrow?  But now I ended up with lots of leftover meringue.  What to do with them?

Then a thought occurs: can I make macarons out of them??

It's not impossible.  Besides, even if they turn out horribly, at least I would get some practice.  The meringue was going to be tossed out anyway, so it's not much of a loss.

Except I didn't have any almond meal on hand, so I used black sesame powder instead.  As for calculating the amount to mix into the meringue... this is where I just winged it.

I started out with about 140 grams of egg whites and 224 grams of granulated sugar for the Italian meringue, for a total weight of 364 grams (approximately).  After using the meringue on the Baked Alaska, I had about 225 grams leftover.  Since about 38% of it should be egg whites (percentage obtained by dividing 140g with 364g), then there should be about 86.5 grams of egg whites in the leftover meringue.  Based on the amount of egg whites, the amount of other ingredients can be calculated, following the baker's percentage in a macaron recipe.

The particular recipe I followed called for 117% almond meal (in my case, ground sesame) and about 200% powdered sugar and 36% granulated sugar (with the egg whites at 100%).  That means that I would need about 102 grams of ground sesame, 173 grams powdered sugar, and 31 grams granulated sugar.  There was about 138 grams of granulated sugar already in the meringue, so I subtracted that from the total amount of sugar required (i.e. 173 grams + 31 grams), which turned out to be 66 grams of powdered sugar.  Have I lost anyone yet??

I whisked the black sesame powder and the powdered sugar together, and folded it into the meringue.

I piped them out onto the sheet pan, sprinkled on some sesame seeds, let them rest for about 15 minutes, then popped them into the oven--and crossed my fingers.

Half way through the baking, I took a peek through the oven window....

Wow, they're turning out nicer than I thought!  The dome-shaped shells, the developing feet...

Behold...."winged" Black sesame macaron with peanutbutter filling!  The all-sesame powder composition gave them an intensely nutty sesame flavor, while the sweet and creamy peanutbutter silenced the bitterness often present in black sesame, mellowing out the entire thing.  As for the texture, these turned out pretty chewy.  Not sure if it was because I overbaked them, or if it's a characteristic of macs made with Italian meringue.  The shells were also thicker.

Well, that was actually a lot of calculation.  So much for winging it...