Making Macarons For Beginners

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Don’t be afraid to make macarons! Here are the best tips for beginners.

The first time I ever made macarons, I failed. Like most people, I gave up on the endeavour and I didn’t look at a macaron again for 2 years. Eventually, I decided to give it another go and I stumbled upon the perfect macaron recipe. I started making macarons almost weekly! It got to a point where my family asked me to stop because we couldn’t keep up with the amount I was pumping out. Who was eating them? What do we do with the surplus?

Recently being home with Covid-19, I decided to pick up making macarons once again! I’ve decided to share some of tips and tricks for these delicious but difficult cookies.

Macaron 101 Tips:

1. Make sure your eggs are at room temperature. If you cracked open an egg and felt the whites while it was cold versus while it was at room temperature, you can actually feel a huge difference in the whites. You want the whites nice and relaxed!
2. There’s the French meringue method and the Italian meringue method. The Italian method uses cooked sugar which creates a more stable meringue which is ideal for macarons.
3. You need a stand mixer. If you’re strong enough— go ahead and whip those meringues yourself. I personally do not have the patience, the emotional capacity, or strength to do this. Make sure you watch your meringues while you whip.
4. You don’t need to use a food processor. Every time I’ve used a food processor, I’ve found my almond flour to clump up, and I’d have to sift it again anyway. Just sift it twice. I sift it once when I weigh it out, then I sift it a second time when incorporating it in with the icing sugar.
5. Use Gel Colour. You’ll get a prettier colour, and you won’t mess with the consistency of the shells like you might using a liquid colour.
6. There’s no real point in flavouring shells. If you’re a beginner, don’t do this. It’ll mess with the ratios of these super finicky cookies! Just focus on making the perfect shell first, and leave the flavours in the filling.
7. Humidity makes a difference! I forgot that I usually make my macarons in Winter when it’s dry in Canada. I was having difficulty during this humid heat wave with my macarons. You need to be able to “dry out” your meringue inside of the macaron batter.
8. Don’t Under Mix. Don’t over Mix! Watch videos on macaronage before you start! This will help you determine the correct viscosity. It should look a bit like wet sand. You are trying to beat out some of the air in your meringue, but not enough that the batter is too runny to pipe.
9. The Pan You Use Matters. I never use a silpat to make macarons. There are many silpat mats you can get that come with the macaron stencils. I find the silpat interfere with the cook of the macaron. I prefer to use parchment paper on a silpat PAN. If you want a stencil, you can trace it on the back of the parchment paper!
10. What the Fill? When you make macarons you’ll end up with egg yolks. An easy way to use them up and to create filling is to create a lemon curd! For those times that you want to explore a cool flavour— make a basic butter cream frosting and add flavouring to it. That’s how I made my black sesame macarons.

The last time I made macarons was 6 months ago. I thought I’d try a new recipe. BIG MISTAKE. Note to self, just because a website is “popular” does not mean their fool proof recipe is good. None of the comments even had a single person say it was successful. The shells were salty, and super wet, didn’t rise, they cracked, etc. Listen to your gut, if you know a recipe is going to bad by the looks of it, it most likely is a bad recipe.

This is the Perfect Macaron Recipe

How To make the Italian Meringue

1. Make sure your bowl and whisk are CLEAN and DRY. Any little residue can ruin your meringue. This also means be careful not to get ANY egg yolks in your mixture.
2. Heat your sugar and water mixture to 110F (I’m Canadian I use F). Then start beating your egg whites.
3. Make sure egg whites have already started to get stiff before adding the hot sugar. Add sugar once it reaches 244.4F

Tip on fixing your meringue if it’s too wet: I messed up. I added my sugar way too early and my meringue was on the verge of becoming too soupy. Then I remembered that cream of tartar is used as stabilizer. So I threw in a few pinches of cream of tartar, and mixed the meringue longer than I usually did. Carefully watched it to make sure it didn’t over mix as well!

Foot Fetish

Of course you want your macarons to develop cute feet! However, sometimes the macarons will just keep rising….and rising…and the feet are HUGE. This means that your macarons are going to be hollow. You didn’t known enough air out of the batter and now it’s just sky high from here. To combat this, turn the temperature of the oven even lower, to about 300F and cook the shells in the oven for longer than the recipe suggests.

To get the pretty rose gold feet, I mixed edible glitter with a bit of vodka and clear vanilla extract to create a lustre paint. I picked up some small soft paint brushes from the dollar store that I only use for baking.

Let me know what you think, and don’t forget to show me your pictures!

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