There were some cracks. There were some deflated, unfooted cookies. However, some of them turned out great! I’d say all in all, pretty successful for a first try! I’ll be going through this process again tonight, so I’ll let you all know if I improve at all! I used the recipe and the endless advice I found on BraveTart, which was amazing. I’ve posted her recipe below, but I’d definitely advice going to the site and reading all of her tricks and tips! This doesn’t have to be as hard as we think!

BraveTart uses all measurements in this recipe, which I think is worth doing. It makes everything much more accurate, which is important for macarons.

French Macarons

Ingredients:

• 4 ounces (115g) blanched almonds or almond flour, or whatever nut you like
• 8 ounces (230g) powdered sugar*
• 5 ounces egg whites (144g), temperature and age not important!
• 2 1/2 ounce (72g) sugar
• the scrapings of 1 vanilla bean or 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp (2g) salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 300° and have ready a large (18”) pastry bag, fitted with a plain tip, along with two sheet pans lined with parchment paper.

Use a 1 1/2” cookie cutter to trace out guide-circles (about an inch apart) and then flip the parchment paper over, ink side down.

If you use almond flour, simply sift it with the powdered sugar and set aside.

Otherwise, use a food processor to process the almonds and powdered sugar for about a minute. Take out the mixture and sift it, reserving whatever bits don’t pass through the sieve. Add these bits back to the food processor and run the machine for another minute. Sift again. You should have about 2 Tbsp of slightly chunkier almond bits, add those into the dry mix.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the egg whites, sugar, vanilla bean (not the extract or paste), and salt and turn the mixer to medium (4 on a Kitchen Aid). Whip for 3 minutes. They will not seem especially foamy at that point.

Increase the speed to medium-high (7 on a Kitchen Aid) and whip another 3 minutes, then crank the speed to 8 for go another 3 minutes.

At that point, turn the mixer off and add in any extracts/flavor/color and whip for a final minute on the highest speed, to evenly distribute the color/flavor.

At the end of this minute, you should have a very stiff, dry meringue. (Check out this photo if you’d like to see a picture of how your meringue should look.) When you remove the whisk attachment, there will be a big clump of meringue in the center, just knock the whisk against the bowl to free it. If the meringue has not become stiff enough to clump inside the whisk, continue beating for another minute, or until it does so.

Now dump in the dry ingredients all at once and fold them in with a rubber spatula. Use both a folding motion (to incorporate the dry ingredients) and a pressing motion, to deflate the meringue against the side of the bowl.

First timers: the dry ingredients/meringue will look hopelessly incompatible. After about 25 turns (or folds or however you want to call “a single stroke of mixing”) the mixture will still have a quite lumpy and stiff texture. Another 15 strokes will see you to “just about right.” Keep in mind that macaronage is about deflating the whites, so don’t feel like you have to treat them oh-so-carefully. You want to knock the air out of them.

Undermixed macaron batter: quite stiff. If you spoon some out and drop it back into the mix, it will just sit there and never incorporate. Do this test before bagging your batter and save yourself the trouble of baking of undermixed macarons!

Overmixed macaron batter: has a runny, pancake batter-like texture. It will ooze continuously, making it impossible to pipe into pretty circles. Try not to reach that point.

You can evaluate your batter one stroke at a time, no rush.

Essentially, the macaron batter needs enough thickness that it will mound up on itself, but enough fluidity that after 20 seconds, it will melt back down. I’ve heard people describe this consistency as lava-like, or molten, and that’s pretty apt.

Transfer about half the batter to a piping bag. (When your bag is too full, the pressure causes the batter to rush out in a way that’s difficult to control, making for sloppy macarons.)

Pipe the batter into the pre-traced circles on the baking sheet. Stop piping just shy of the borders of the circle, as the batter will continue to spread just a bit.

After piping your macarons, take hold of the sheet pan and hit it hard against your counter. Rotate the pan ninety degrees and rap two more times. This will dislodge any large air bubbles that might cause your macarons to crack

Bake for about 18 minutes, or until you can cleanly peel the parchment paper away from a macaron. If, when you try to pick up a macaron, the top comes off in your hand, it’s not done.

Once the macarons have baked, cool thoroughly on the pans, before peeling the cooled macarons from the parchment. Use a metal spatula if necessary.

The pretty ones…

and the rejects.

Swiss Meringue Buttercream from Martha Stewart

I halved this recipe and it was plenty to fill the macarons from the recipe above.

Ingredients: