Weigh ingredients accurately and sieve the icing sugar and ground almonds together into a bowl.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites. It is important to keep whisking the egg whites until they are solid - almost like styrofoam.
Add half of the caster sugar and whisk again. Shortly afterwards, add the second half.
Once the egg whites have stiffened completely add the gel or powdered food colouring.
Whisk the colouring into the egg whites until it has blended completely.
Gradually add the almond/icing sugar mix in two or three goes and mix gently by hand.
You don’t want to fold the dry ingredients in, you want to blend them in with the egg whites.
Once all of the dry ingredients have been completely blended in, the consistency of the mixture shouldn’t be too runny. It should run off your spatula and form ribbons.
Pop a standard round tipped nozzle into the bottom of a piping bag and pour the mixture in.
Arrange baking trays lined with baking paper and pipe out little macaron disks approximately 3cm in diameter.
Tap the trays on the worktop. Doing this gets any air bubbles out.
Let the macarons set on the baking trays for approximately 30-60 minutes. You are waiting for them to get what’s called a “skin”, this means you should be able to touch the macarons and not have any mixture come off on your finger. Be patient.
Put in the oven at 160oC for 12 minutes. Six minutes in, you need to turn the macarons around and put on a different shelf. This should ensure more even cooking.
After taking them out of the oven, let them cool down on a work surface. Then, gently peel the baking paper off the bag of the macarons and match the macarons up into pairs.
Add the strawberries, sugar and lemon juice to a saucepan and cook on a medium heat until it resembles a thick puree. Then leave to cool to room temperature.
Use a hand whisk to whip the butter until light and fluffy and then add the icing sugar and whip again.
Once it has cooled, add the strawberry puree to the already whipped butter and whip until light and well combined. The mixture should be a nice pink colour.
Let the strawberry mix chill in the fridge for 5 minutes.
When the filling has cooled down, add it to a piping bag and pipe a generous amount onto one side of the macaron shell.
Place its partner on top and sandwich them together.
Pop the filled macarons in the fridge overnight (yes, they taste better the next day)
Take out the macarons no less than 30 minutes before eating and enjoy!
