French Macarons

I have been practicing making macarons and trying different recipes and techniques with the hope of mastering this cookie.  I have a pinterest board devoted to strictly macarons and there are 56 pins including some videos.  I figured if a preteen girl can make these on video I should be able to learn it as well. In one of the videos the many places where failure could happen were elaborated.  Wrong proportion of ingredients, meringue too stiff or not stiff enough, over mixing or under mixing the almond flour/powdered sugar mixture into the meringue, improper baking--any of these could cause no feet, spreading feet, hollow centers, cracked tops, or not level tops.  To be truthful, I have experienced all of those failures and each time I tried something new.  Here is what worked for me.

1.  I have a stand mixer with a large bowl and I had trouble getting my meringue to work with three egg whites.  I eventually tried doubling the recipe and with the larger quantity of egg whites my meringue turned out great, lots of volume and nice moderately stiff peaks.

2.  My oven has a convection fan that can be used and I found that I had better results with the fan off and just the bake setting. 

3.  When baking the macarons I preheated the oven to 375 and when it was at temperature I lowered the temperature to 350 as I put the pan in.   When I took the pan out I reheated the oven back to 375 and when it was again hot I put the next pan in and lowered the temp again.

4.  I have good quality, heavy baking sheets and even with those I found that I had better success when I stacked two pans together in the oven.  I also used the rack in the lower part of the oven and baked them one set of stacked pans at a time.

5..  Once the macaron batter is ready a piping bag is used to pipe the macarons onto a parchment lined baking sheet.  The baking sheet is then rapped firmly on a flat surface, first one end and then the other.  The macarons rest for at least fifteen minutes until the tops are slightly dry to the touch before baking.  The dried tops allows the top to raise as one piece forming the feet during the baking.

6.  After baking I allowed the macarons to partially cool on the baking sheet and then slid the parchment off of the pan and left the macarons to cool completely on the parchment.  Once they are fully cooled they can be gently peeled off the parchment.

7.  The last step is to match up similar sized macarons and make sandwich cookies with piped buttercream or ganache between.  They filled cookies should be refrigerated for 12-24 hours after assembling before eating for the best taste and texture.  The aged cookies should have a crisp outer shell and a moist chewy center.

French Macarons

170 grams almond flour or finely ground almonds

300 grams confectioners sugar

egg whites from 6 large eggs

110 grams granulated sugar

Place the egg whites in mixer and begin beating.  Mix on medium speed until frothy then slowly add the granulated sugar.  Increase the mixer speed to medium high and whip until moderately stiff peaks.  Meanwhile place the confectioners sugar and ground almonds in a food processor and process.  Sift the mixture and discard any larger particles.  Add one half of the dry mixture to the eggs and fold together.  Add the remaining dry mixture and fold 15 or 20 times until incorporated and the mixture flows off the spatula in a thick ribbon and slowly levels itself in the bowl.  Do not over mix.  If the mixture remains mounded fold one or two more times.  If coloring is to be added to the batter it should be added at the start of the folding so that no additional folding or stirring is required to incorporate the color.  The color will fade slightly during the baking so add a little more coloring than you think that you will need.

Fill  a piping bag with a large round tip and pipe small mounds on the parchment lined sheet.  The mounds should spread slightly and flatten.  Grasp the cookie sheet with both hands on one end and rap the other end firmly on a table or countertop.  Swap ends and rap the other end too. Allow the filled sheet to rest for at least 15 minutes, preferably 30-60 minutes.  . 

Preheat the oven to 375.  When preheated place the cookie sheet on another cookie sheet and place the stacked sheets in the oven on a low rack.  Reduce the temperature to 350 and bake for 15-18 minutes removing them from the oven before they brown. 

Buttercream filling

1 stick butter

Confectioners sugar

1/4 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract

Place the softened butter in the bowl of a food processor. Add confectioners sugar and pulse.  Check the consistency and add more sugar until a soft consistency that will pipe easily but still hold its shape.  Too stiff and the filling may damage the fragile cookies.  Pipe filling onto the underside of one macaron and top with a similarly sized macaron.  Allow the filled cookies to age in the refrigerator 12-24 hours and up to 3 days.  Can be frozen.   

Adapted from here utilizing tips from here and here.