French Macarons

Versatile flavors and colors are possible! Macarons are cute little dessert sandwiches. I love making them, but personally do not like eating them.

To make the chocolate version, click here: https://brock280.wixsite.com/rachelsfoodblog/blog/chocolate-and-plain-macarons

Below is the recipe and pictures of the process for making macarons!

Ingredients:

Cookies:

• 2 cups powdered sugar

• 1 1/2 cup very finely ground almond flour

• 4 egg whites

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar

• food coloring (optional)

Custard Filling:

• 3 egg yolks (leftover from above)

• 9 Tbsp. sugar

• 5 tbsp. milk

• 10 tbsp softened unsalted butter

• 1 tsp vanilla, coconut, or other extract

• Food coloring (optional)

Directions:

Custard Filling:

1. Make the custard first (to chill while making cookies). Take the soft butter and mix it with a spoon until smooth.

2. In an aluminum pan, whisk together milk, sugar, and egg yolks. Then, put the pan on medium heat. Continually whisk as it heats up, making sure to scrape the sides.

3. When you can scrap the whisk on the bottom and mixture doesn’t quickly fill in the gaps (has thickened), then it’s done.

4. Take it off the heat and add the butter, whisking it in until it melts. You can color and flavor the custard it at this point, if desired. Cover with plastic wrap (touching the surface) and chill in refrigerator.

Cookies:

1. Optional step: Cut two pieces of parchment paper to the size of your baking pans. Use a cylindrical object (I use spice container lid) to draw 1 ¼ inch wide circles about 1/2 inch apart in pencil. The pencil side will sit face side down in the pan.

2. In a medium bowl whisk almond flour and powdered sugar together. Then, sift them into another bowl. If the almond flour is too coarse, only measure out 1 1/2 cups of the fine almond flour. Simply balanced brand almond flour is the finest I've found.

3. Separate egg whites and add them to the mixer with a whisk attachment. Mix about 30 seconds to 1 minute on medium speed, until the eggs become frothy (white and bubbly). Add in ½ the sugar and whisk on medium speed for about 1 minute. Add in the rest of the sugar.

4. Then turn on high speed and mix until soft peaks form (2-3 minutes). During this time you can add the food coloring until it’s a few shades darker than the desired color (they lighten when baking). Mix egg whites until stiff peaks form (stick straight up, not flopping over).

5. Then, take the mixing bowl off of the mixer and add ½ the powdered sugar and almond flour mixture. Slowly (and carefully) fold the almond mixture in, making sure to scrape down the sides and spatula occasionally. Once mostly incorporated, add in the rest of the flour mix and repeat.

6. As you are carefully mixing, you want to get to a perfect consistency, which is not very lumpy or bubbly, but still thick, and when you take the spatula out, the mix should slowly come off in “blobs” or ribbons. Stop mixing.

7. Prepare a piping bag with 1/4 to ½ inch wide hole and carefully spoon the mix in. If using parchment paper, pipe 4 little blobs on the four corners of the pan before putting parchment paper down. This acts like a glue to prevents movement.

8. Pipe circles of mix onto the parchment paper (using stencil circles if desired). Hole the piping bag straight up and squeeze, forming a blob that then widens into a disk (DO NOT TILT THE PIPING BAG). When the circle is about 1 1/4 inch wide, stop piping and flick the piping bag off to avoid too much of a tip forming at the top of the mixture.

9. When done piping all cookies, lift pans up about 5 inches, and bang them on the table 5-6 times. Try not to move the parchment paper or tilt the pan in the process. This slamming helps release trapped air bubbles. Let them rest 45-60 minutes before baking. This allows them to develop a skin. You can tell when they're ready to bake if you can tap them with you're finger and they're not sticky.

10. Put the oven rack in the middle of the oven, and preheat oven to 300*F. Bake 1 pan of cookies at a time on the middle rack for 14-18 minutes. They should not brown a lot and to test if they're ready check if one of the cookies easily comes (it will stick if it isn't ready). Let them cool about half an hour.

11. When cooled, pair the macaroons matching in size. Then place the custard in a piping bag with a 1/4 inch round tip and pipe about 1-2 teaspoons onto each cookie half and put the cookies together in a sandwich shape.

12. Recipe makes 60 1 inch macarons, 40 1 1/4 inch macarons, or 30 1 3/4 inch macarons.

Custard Filling

After adding the egg yolks, sugar, and milk to the pan, and before heating up.

After whisking all ingredients together and whisking continuously while it heats up. If it's bubbling too much be sure to reduce the heat.

Might've overcooked my sutard just a tad. It didn't end up being very smooth. Oh well :)

Before mixing the butter into the custard.

After mixing in the butter into the custard.

After mixing the coloring and flavoring into the custard. Now it's time to cool it down!

Mixture is chilling in the fridge! The plastic wrap touching it prevents a skin from forming on the top of the custard.

Cookies

An optional step includes tracing circles in pencil onto the underside of the parchment paper. It helps get the macaron cookies to ~ the right size and positioning.

An optional step includes tracing circles in pencil onto the underside of the parchment paper.

Whisk together the almond flour and powdered sugar. This simply balanced brand is the finest I've found. Everyday Essentials and Bob's red mill almond flour are too coarsely ground!

Then sift the mixture into another bowl (helps remove any clumps!) Now we can focus on the egg whites!

The separated egg whites and yolks. The yolks were used in the custard and the whites will be used for the cookies.

Let's focus on the whites. These will be whisked on medium speed for 30-60 seconds, until white and foamy (next picture.)

After getting to the white and foamy stage, add in half the sugar (seen on the left side). Then whisk another minute or so on medium speed before adding the rest of the sugar (next picture).

After whisking another minute I added the rest of the sugar (right side). Now time to whisk on high speed until stiff peaks!

Add in the coloring (if using) as you are whisking to stiff peaks.

Whisked to stiff peaks! The egg whites+sugar stand up and don't flop over.

Whipped egg whites (another viewpoint). About to fold in the almond flour mixture!

After adding in 1/2 the flour mixture and before mixing.

After folding in the first 1/2 the almond flour. It doesn't need to be mixed in all the way, since more flour mixture needs to be added in.

Before folding in the rest of the almond flour mixture. This is the trickiest part! Folding it in to the exact right consistency is key!

When it's properly folded in, the mixture should fall off the spatula in slow, gentle ribbons. It shouldn't resist falling off the spatula but it shouldn't fall off quickly either, if that makes sense.

So this is what it looks like! This time I undermixed just slightly, but they still turned out pretty great!

Now place 1/3 to 1/2 the mixture in a piping bag fixed with a 1/4 or 1/2 inch circular piping tip.

The piping tip.

Place 4 blobs of the macaron mixture onto the corners of the pan for the parchment paper to stick to.

The parchment paper is stuck on! (will help with the tapping/slamming process later.

Piped macarons, each has a "tip" that will be gently pressed down with a finger in the next picture.

Sip you're finger in water, tap down a point gently, and repeat, to smooth out the top of the macarons.

Then, lift and gently slam the pan on the countertop 5-6 times, to help air bubbles reach the top.

Then let them rest 45-60 minutes so the skin can form on top before baking. The skin helps them rise and for the "foot" to form.

After baking! Didn't get very big feet on them, but i think it's because I slightly undermixed the cookie mixture.

Fill the piping bag with the custard.

After pairing the macaron cookies, pipe 1/2 - 2 tsp. custard onto one half.

Then gently squish together into a cookie!