French Macarons! Last week sometime I asked Mom if I could try to make French Macarons, to which she replied, “No, Macarons are a tough cookie to crack! I suggest you try something easier”. But, I so wanted to try making them. So on Saturday, while mom and dad were busy watching a movie, I headed to the kitchen to make them. I knew mom was so engrossed in the movie and so comfortably perched in the couch, she would not care as to what I was making.
However, my perfect opportunity to make the French Macarons was soon ruined. In my rush to get the sugar to the whipping egg whites in the stand mixer, I dropped the entire jar and broke it. Mom came in running and was super mad. If you know my mom, you know she is a cleaning freak, so there she was cleaning the mess. It was perfect timing because I needed her to check for me if I whipped the egg whites right to absolute “stiff peaks”. Mom loves baking, so once she figured I was making macarons, she stood by and gave me many useful tips which I will list below. And let me tell you all when I baked a perfect batch of macarons that night, Mom was so proud. In fact, she let me make another batch on Sunday again! Now she is asking me to practice them if possible every day!! She keeps telling me that I should make them enough times to get the hang of them.
Now, I don’t want you to imagine a smug smile on my face while I am telling you this, but I think I have figured out French Macarons already. One of the keys to perfect macarons, other than patience, is to perfectly measure out your ingredients. Please use a food scale for this if you take my advice for macarons.
If you ask me to score myself on the macarons, I would say a full score on the Rose ones and probably a 8 out of 10 in the Lavender macarons. I can assure you, you will see many more Macaron recipes on my blog in the future. I love eating them and I loved ending up making perfect ones!!
You may also like the cookies below:
Ingredients
Method
- Pulse the almond flour in a food processor a few times.
- Add the powdered sugar to it and sift it. My mom asked me to sift this mixture at least a couple of times. Three times would be better. Discard whatever you sift out.
- Separate the egg whites from the egg yolk. Be very careful not to have the egg yolk break into the whites.
- Now in the bowl of a stand mixer, add the egg whites and the cream of tartar at medium speed.
- As you see the egg whites getting foamy, add the granulated sugar in 2-3 batches. Increase the speed, and let it whip.
- The egg white should be whipped to a stiff consistency. Easily took me about 6-8 mins for the whole process. You have to stop the mixer and check if the egg whites when scooped gets stiff peaks.
- Add the rose OR lavender extract (I made two types as you can see and use one for each) and the food color. I used pink for the Rose ones and purple for the lavender ones. Give it one more mix for a second and remove.
- Add the almond flour and powdered sugar mix into the egg whipped egg whites in 2-3 batches and mix it in. It took me 3-4 mins to mix and get a texture which would let me write an eight with the batter falling freely from the spatula used for mixing.
- Now fill a piping bag with a round tip and pour the batter in it.
- Prepare couple of cookie sheets with parchment paper. I did not use a macaron template but I strongly advise using one. The shapes of my macarons were not uniform for sure especially the lavender ones as you can see.
- Pipe small circles about an inch and half in diameter about a couple of inches apart from each other on the cookie sheet.
- You should put gentle pressure on the piping bag and let the batter fill out from the center and form a circle.
- Once you are done piping the circles, tap and gently bang the cookie sheets on your countertop for 2-3 times. This actually helps reveal the air bubbles. With a tooth pick burst the bubbles gently and remove them.
- Now let the cookie sheet rest on the counter top for at least 20-30 mins.
- The macarons should dry up enough so that when touched they feel dry and nothing sticks to your fingers.Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.
- Put the cookie sheets in the middle rack and bake for 20 mins. Take them out and let them stand for 10 mins. Remove on to a wired cookie rack and let them cool down.
- In the meantime, whip together all the ingredients for the filling and fill a piping bag with a round tip again.
- Take the cookies and fill one side with the filling and place another cookie gently on top to sandwich them.
- To decorate them, for the lavender cookies I had put some golden sugar on them just before I put them in the oven to bake them.
- For the gold macarons, I used ¼ tsp edible gold dust and mixed it with sugar syrup and painted on the macarons.
Notes
- Make sure the eggs, cream cheese, and butter (the latter two for the filling) are at room temperature.
- Sift the almond powder and powdered sugar at least a couple of times.
- Make sure the bowl of the stand mixer is absolutely clean and there are no traces of anything in it. Wash and wipe it before adding the egg whites.
- Use gel food color preferably and use enough to get a deeper color. On baking the color usually fades a little.
- Do not go overboard with the filling.
- I used rose and lavender extract because we had them at home. But the most basic flavor to try and get started would be vanilla extract which probably you have in your pantry.
