To start mix the icing sugar together with the almonds. Make sure there are no lumps so put them through a sieve. Mix the two together well and add the first 48 gr of eggwhites; not beaten!! Heat the oven to 150C.
Put a little bit of water in a small saucepan. It should just cover the bottom and add 148 gr of sugar here. The extra 15 gr of sugar is merely to make up for whatever is left sticking to the sides of the pan once cooked.
Beat the other 48 gr of eggwhites stiff and add the coloring of your choice at this stage into the eggwhites. Boil the sugar to 120 C. While the eggwhites are being beaten add the hot sugar and keep on mixing until the mixture is lukewarm. Really make sure it is not too hot. While pouring in the sugar on top of the eggwhites, do not pour directly on top of the whiskers or that will make a mess.
Once it is cool enough add the mixture to the almond mixture and fold it in together until the mixture resembles thick ribbons and will flow back if you make a peak. Put it on a baking tray. Depending on your oven; it should bake 12-15 minutes.
FILLING
Put everything together in a small saucepan (except the alcohol) and heat. Make sure you leave it to boil well with the pectine. Take it of the fire and add the eau de vie. Use about 5 gr of filling per macaron. Don't wait too long or the filling will become gelatinous and will be difficult to spread evenly as we found out. Hence the dots on the macaron shells. We were a bit messy!!
Sidenote: we made the filling but ended up short, so we had to make more, so either we messed up with applying or we had too many macarons... :)