Delicate and brittle on the outside with rich buttercream or ganache in the middle, macarons are not as difficult as you think. You can color them for any occasion and they're just beautiful, delicious and fun. Note: This recipe does require a scale, otherwise there is too much variability in the measurements to come out well.
Rating
5 stars (6 reviews)
Ingredients
125 g almond meal (it needs to be blanched)
225 g confectioners' sugar
130 g egg whites (about 4 large, pasteurized eggs will not work)
110 g sugar
food color
flavor extracts
Steps
In a Food Processor, mix together the almond meal and the confectioners’ sugar until it is well mixed and very fine. You may need to scrape down the sides.
Beat the egg whites until they are foamy. Sprinkle the sugar over them in a steady stream and then turn up the speed and beat the whites until soft peaks. At this point you’ll add any color and extracts. Continue beating until you’ve reached stiff peaks.
In three additions you will now fold in the almond meal mixture. Use a rubber spatula to fold them in. Once you have repeated this two more times with the remaining almond mixture, your batter will be quite thick.
Collette Christian has a fail safe way of knowing when your batter is ready. Here is a close approximation: First press it up on the side of the bowl, and it will cling onto the sides without slumping into the middle. You want to continue folding the batter and repeat testing it on the side of the bowl, until it slumps down when you press it onto the sides of the bowl. Then you are ready to pipe.
Using a Pastry Bag, fitted with a Round Tip, pipe the batter onto a flat baking sheet lined with a piece of parchment paper. In Collette’s class she has circle templates to print out as a guide of how large to make the dots and how far apart. If you are new to piping this template is a fantastic tool.
Once you have piped out a full tray, you will bang the tray on the counter to work out some of the bubbles and flatten the macarons. Repeat with another tray until all of the batter is used up.
Let them sit at room temperature until the tops are dry to the touch, about 30 minutes, but it will depend on the environment. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 330°F.
Bake the trays one at a time for 11 minutes. If they are not set, then rotate the tray and bake for an additional 2 to 3 minutes. This may be slightly different depending on your oven. Let them cool before filling.
Once they are cooled. Flip over every other shell. Try to match up same sized shells.
Fill your macaron shells with ganache or buttercream or whatever filling your heart desires! Top the macarons and store in the refrigerator until ready to serve. They last for a few days.
Reviews
BBiswas on 2023-04-14 (5 stars): I have been baking desserts since I was a child - but never tried macarons before this! For some reason I believed they are really finicky and difficult to make. I carefully read and re-read Zoe's recipe, watched the video, even contemplated taking Colette Christin's class. Also pored over Stella Parks' Bravetart chapter on macarons before embarking on this journey. Happy to report first attempt was a success - no hiccups at all! So much so that I was sure I was doing something wrong, that this wasn't supposed to be easy! But no - nothing wrong. I had silpat type liners that had perfect 2" templates built in - so that was easy. The folding was easy from Zoe's technique of batter slumped over. I used vanilla paste as I love the little freckles of vanilla. And made french buttercream from the left over yolks to make the filling. Everything came together wonderfully. The shells slid off the silpat without much coaxing, the texture was chewy yet crisp, the buttercream was the perfect match. I do want to make them look pretty with the pastel colors, so I will use freeze dried fruit (strawberry, blueberry and apple or pineapple) and powder them to get the basic red, blue and yellow colors. Hopefully a teaspoon or so will suffice. And I can mix and match them to get green, lilac, and peach colors too! No artificial color or dye needed. Wish I could upload pictures to show you!
