Voila! Les Macarons

I've been reading about these little fellows for a while and all I can find online is one disaster story after another. Any articles I read about macarons are followed by a string of comments such as "ohh I'd love to make these but I'm far too scared" or "I would try to make these again but I don't think my blood pressure could handle it". To be honest, I'd freaked myself out a little just by reading about them! But I had to give it a go so I psyched myself up and got down to it.

My first ever attempt at baking (and eating!) French macarons was a success! I couldn't believe it! Me? A successful macaron baker! It's a miracle! Or maybe just a little beginners luck.
One thing I did make sure of, that I don't normally do, is weigh out all my ingredients and set them in little bowls ready to be used so that there was less chance of forgetting something or weighing something incorrectly in a blind panic to get everything together in time before the sugar syrup burnt to a black goo or I over whipped the egg whites.

The only stumbling block was that they were supposed to be raspberry macarons...but I left the raspberry flavouring at home when I was packing up all my baking equipment to take to Mum and Dad's house. I was baking them there because Mum's oven is one HECK of a lot more reliable than my 70 year old piece of junk. It's brown for goodness sake. You couldn't buy a brown oven now-a-days even if you wanted to! Which you wouldn’t.

This recipe made about 60 medium sized macaron shells, about 1 1/2 inches in diameter which made 30 macarons in total.

A few important notes...

This is one recipe that you can not weigh out its ingredients with cups and spoon measures. It is imperative that you have an accurate and reliable digital kitchen scale.

You will need a stand mixer. For this I used Mum's new kitchen aid with the whisk attachment. A kenwood mixer would do the job just as well, which is what I have at home.

3 large flat baking sheets and enough parchment/greaseproof paper to cover them with 2 layers each.

A piping bag and nozzle with 1/2 - 3/4 inch round tip.

Powder or gel/paste food colouring if you want to colour them. Liquid food colouring would alter the composition of the recipe too much and you would end up with flat chewy meringues instead of beautiful little macaron shells.

Now, for the most important part. THE FEET!

All successful macarons have feet. It's true. Just below the shiny, smooth, rounded shell should be a little knobbly skirt all around. This is the foot. See diagram below of the perfect macaron...

Another little note, the majority of recipes that I read said that it was so so important to age your egg whites for up to 7 days before you plan to make your macaroons. The purpose of this was to break down the albumen in the whites, allowing them to whisk up to firm peaks, giving a crisp, dry macaron shell. I didn't bother with this and my shells are perfectly crisp! One thing I definitely wouldn't argue with is letting the piped mixture rest on the baking sheets for at least half an hour. I baked the 3 trays off one at a time and the 3rd tray was faultless. I put this down to it having that extra half hour of resting time. You want to put them into the oven when you can lightly touch the surface of the shell without the mixture sticking to your finger.

My just baked macarons, perfect!

Filling my macarons with vanilla Italian buttercream. Pipe a small amount of the mixture into the centre of one macaron shell, take another shell and press your thumb gently into the centre of it to make a shallow well. Place on top. Et voila! Les macarons c'est complete!
I’m still testing this theory, but some say that macarons which have sat in the fridge for 2 or 3 days and allowed to come back to room temperature before being eaten taste better than fresh ones. They have had time to soften in the centre and absorb some of the flavourings from the buttercream. If you can wait that long before devouring them all!


I left 10 behind at Mum and Dad's house for them to enjoy with their guests who were coming over that night and when I rang Dad earlier to ask how they went down with supper he said "they went down like nom, nom, nom, nom until they were all gone." Thanks Dad, that was very helpful!