I’m super excited to share this particular post with everyone! Homemade macarons! We love macarons so much but then who doesn’t, amirite? These dainty meringue based sandwich cookies have stolen the world’s sugar encrusted heart. So what could be better than to be able to make these at home, right? We’ve previously successfully made scrumptious chocolate flavored macarons at THKC however, every time we tried to make other coloured macarons we have failed. 🙁
Onwards in time…and this Christmas my little girl and I decided to participate in her school Xmas bazaar and thus needed to bake up a seeming truckload of cookies to sell. And one of the cookies that my little girl really wanted for the bake sale was macarons coloured in red and green, all the Christmas colors. Yiks! Could I do it? Note sure but like a good and hopeful mama, I said yes to coloured macarons.
Ahhh…a challenge laid down. Dear readers, the cookie game was afoot!
Let me start this food adventure with a quick review of my previous attempts at coloured macaron making. I had carefully followed a few recipes that popped up on the first page of Google search results for ‘macaron recipe’ as well as a couple from my macaron cookie recipe books. And each time I could not successfully make coloured macarons. No feet, cracked tops, wrinkled tops, etc…you name it, I did it with these colored macaron recipe attempts. Sobs into pillow…
So what to do now? Dang it all, with the cookie challenge laid down, I was pretty nervous. Could I even make red and green coloured macarons? I rather frantically started researching. Did y’all know there are approx. one billion trillion macaron recipes online? And they all promise great results. What the heck was a girl to do?
When I finally located the original recipe (on web archive here as for some reason the actual bravetart site has been taken down) I saw that it was as promised, no fuss and no muss. So, nervous but hopeful, I was ready to try bravetart’s macaron recipe out!
The recipe starts with almond flour. Best to buy almond flour as it will already have skins removed and be milled to a fine powder. I’ve tried using whole almonds to make my own almond flour, first blanching to remove the skins and then using my spice/nut grinder to grind the almonds down to a powder. It’s rather hard to make the powder uniformly fine while not over grinding it so that it turns to nut butter. I would recommend buying the almond flour as it saves a lot of time.
But wait, you will also need to sieve the powdered sugar so might as well do it together. Weigh out both almond flour and powdered sugar and sieve to remove any large pieces and lumps.
See how fine the sieved mixture looks? No more lump or bumps and perfectly light for our delicate macaron batter, so much the easier to allow the macaron to rise and form those wee feet!
The other half of the batter is egg whites whipped up to form the meringue that makes the macarons oh so light. Myths swirl about the issue of egg whites used in macarons . Egg whites must be fresh, egg whites must be not fresh, be room temp, be straight from the fridge, be a few days old, be a couple weeks old, etc. What the heck, amirite?
Stella’s (that’s the awesome pastry chef lady behind bravetart) approach to egg whites was pretty laidback. Egg whites- „temperature and age not important!” Whoa, a big turn around from all the other careful advice! I mean I’ve previously tried room temp to a couple days old to a couple weeks old egg whites. Apparently all that fuss is NOT necessary.
So what did I do then? I almost followed Stella’s advice except I did do what I normally do when baking: I let my eggs sit out until they reached room temp. Then I separated my egg whites from the yolks and added salt and sugar. Note that you must be sure that there are absolutely NO egg yolks in your egg whites! Even the tiniest bit of egg yolks mean game over for your meringues.
Tip: The littlest bit of fat can negatively impact whipped egg whites. So before whipping it’s a good idea to wipe down your bowl and whip with a bit of vinegar to remove any trace of fat.
Time to whip the egg whites. Here the simple yet specific method of whipping is what I think most helped me to finally successful macarons. Stella says to whip for 3 mins at medium until foamy. The photo above shows the results after 3 mins. Some bubbles really. I think this part is just to loosen up the egg white.
The next stage of whipping kicks it up to medium high speed for another 3 mins. You can see that the egg whites are quite fluffy now.
Now kick up the speed to the highest and give it another 3 mins. This part surprised me, I don’t think I’ve ever whipped my egg whites to such stiffness before. Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing wrong all those times before?
It’s time to add color and flavor! Regarding food coloring to use for colour in these vibrant little macarons, a couple of thoughts:
First of all, don’t waste time using the cheap water-based food coloring that you can find at the grocery store. These will add unnecessary liquid to your batter and the coloring ability is weak.
To achieve the vibrant colors that define macarons use either food colouring gels or food coloring powders that can be purchased at baking supply stores. Both gel and powders will give you bright vibrant colors without adding too much liquid.
Another problem with food coloring in macarons is that sometimes it seems that the colors brown as the macarons bake. What’s actually happening is that the colors are fading, not browning. It turns out that not all food colour gels are created equal! Some are specifically made for icing use, which means they are not meant for baking. So check out the label of the food gels carefully and if it says ‘icing color’, don’t use it for macarons. Americolor gels seem to work well with baking. The best color that I got, lush and vibrant, was with food colouring powder.
For the flavoring the macaron use a bit of non oil based flavoring of your choice. We used a bit of both vanilla and almond extract. The choices of food flavor extracts are endless these days. You don’t even have to add any flavor, the almond flour is already pretty darn yummilicious.
Okey dokey, lecture over, back to the present, we’ve added our colouring and flavoring. I love this next bit of Stella’s instructions. She say to „whip for a final minute on the highest speed, just to show it who’s boss.” Who’s the boss, indeed. Make sure to whip that baby until the batter once again collects inside the whip as per photo above.
Now it’s time to mix the wet with the dry. This part has a fancy french word for it, ‘macaronage’. This is another part of the making of the macaron that has a lot of myths surrounding it. How to make the strokes, how many strokes, what the texture should end up as, how it should flow when ready, etc. Seems so specific. What if you overdo it or underdo it?
Mix the eggs white and almond flour together using longish strokes that go over as much batter as possible. Stella gives a guide of 25 strokes to a „quite lumpy and stiff texture.” Then another 15 strokes to „just about right.” The problem is, what is just about right when you don’t know what is ‘just about right’?
There is a simple test you can do to check which I think is very helpful to let you know what is ‘just about right.’ There is a guide line of about 35 strokes total. So let’s say you go to 30 strokes. Then simply check by scooping up a bit of batter and dropping on a surface in a round blob. Then wait 20 secs or so to see what the batter does.
Does it stay stiffly in the same blob shape that you dropped it in? It’s under mixed. Mix a couple more strokes and retest. Does it spread out a lot as flat as a pancake? Oops overmixed. Go ahead and bake up some slightly fugly but still totally scrumptious macarons and better next next time. Does it flatten and spread just a little bit? Perfect! Advance to GO!
Another test is the disappear back into the batter test. Drop a bit of batter back into the bowl. Your batter is ready if it disappears back into the batter after 20 secs.
Here is our final macaron batter after macaronage. Folks usually say that at this point the batter should flow off your spatula like lava or soft serve ice cream.
To be honest, judging the doneness of the macaronage is kinda a bitch place to be. We made three successful batches of macarons with this recipe and each time I totally thought that we overmixed it. I think understanding macaronage comes with experience.
Another mixing tip that is really useful is to make sure that during the approx. 35-40 strokes for macaronage, do be sure to mix all the meringue and flour together. If you leave any unmixed lumps it will show up as you pipe and then cause your macaron to crack or bump up as they bake.
With the macaronage ‘just about right’, it’s time to pipe. Half the batter goes into a big piping bag with a big tip installed. And, as I cannot for the life of me pipe in equal amounts of roundness, I prepared piping templates to fit my baking trays using a pencil, sheets of parchment paper and the round cap of a bottle as a guide for drawing the circles. Just remember that the sheets must be flipped over so that pencil marks are not touching any batter.
Pipe to fill the circles only 85-90% full, as they will spread a bit more. As I think I overmixed the macaronage it was hard to stop the flow of the batter when I finished piping. I ended up using my finger to stopper the batter before moving on to pipe the next macaron. Really fancy finger work, I know, but thank goodness our macarons still came out beautiful.
The next step is super fun! Take your trays of piped macarons and slam down on a table. All frustrations gone! This will get the large bubbles out of your cookies. Large bubbles can cause cracking so don’t miss this step.
The final step before baking is the all important ‘rest’ session. Stella says that she doesn’t even rest her macarons (so cheeky!) but I just didn’t dare to miss this step, especially as I felt I had overmixed the batter. The resting allows the batter surface to air dry until not sticky. This forms a skin around the batter which, when baking, helps the macaron top to push up in one go, allowing legs to form below.
I love this part of baking. It’s OvenWatch! Watching the the oven as your goodies bake inside, it’s a time honored tradition for bakers! We also did a macaron rising video for those of you who really love to OvenWatch.
Especially fun watching these babies bake and see the wee feet form! In the photo you can see the smooth macaron top pushed up by the frilly legs below it.
The gorgeous results out of our oven. Macarons with smooth shiny tops and cute little feet. Perfection, amirite?! We were so over the moon for our coloured macarons!
We made a total three batches of macarons with this recipe. We had a couple of baking bumps (a few bumpy tops from unmixed batter and a couple of hollow macarons*) but overall it was SO AMAZING! Stella’s macaron recipe totally rocks!!! A total of three batches of macarons in colors of red and green with one batch completely mixed up by my little girl herself and the results were fabulously gorgeous! (And totally sellable at a certain Xmas bake sale, thank goodness!) Finally, a coloured macaron recipe that worked for us! Yippey Yay!!!
*Last tip: Some of our baked macarons were coming out hollow inside. Yiks! However Stella had a tip for this which worked for us. Once the macarons come out from the oven, very carefully lift up the whole parchment paper, macarons and all (the macarons will be stuck onto the paper), and place back down flipped upside down. Be gentle and try not to knock the macarons about too much. That’s it!
Coloured Macarons filled with White Chocolate Ganache
Prep time: 20 mins Bake time: 18 mins
Ingredients:
Filling
- 7.4 oz white chocolate, 210g
- 6.5 tbsp heavy cream, 98g
Macaron
- 1 cup plus 3 tbsps almond flour, 115g
- 2 cups powdered sugar, 230g
- 5 oz egg white, 144g, (need 5 eggs @ room temperature)
- 5 3/4 tbsp sugar, 70g
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp almond extract
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
- food color gel
Make the Ganache: Chop white chocolate as fine as you can. Heat up cream until just boiling. Pour hot cream over the chocolate. Cover and let sit for 3 mins. Stir the chocolate and cream. If the chocolate is not totally melted yet place bowl over the a pot of just simmering water (a bain marie) and keep stirring until completely melted and smooth. Let the ganache cool for a couple of hours or until set enough to pipe.
Prepare the macaron templates: Find something with a 1 1/2 inch lid that you can use as a guide to make a piping template for the macarons. Use it and a pencil to mark circles an inch apart on a parchment paper the size of your baking tray. Mark out enough template sheets for all the 36 cookies.
Mix the dry ingredients: Measure the almond flour and powdered sugar out. Use a silicon spatula to push the flour and sugar together through a sieve. Any large pieces that don’t fit through the sieve can be discarded.
Make the meringue: Add egg whites, sugar and salt to the mixer bowl. Whip for 3 minutes at medium speed. The mixture will be lightly foamy. Increase speed to medium high and whip for 3 mins. Increase speed to high and whip for a further 3 mins. The meringue should be pretty darn stiff now.
Add in flavor extracts and food coloring gel now. Mix with a spatula to check if desired color is reached. When the color is to your liking whip again for another minute at high speed. At this point the meringue should be really stiff, stiff enough to clump in a big ol’ lump in the inside of your whip. If not clumping keep whipping until it does.
Macaronage: Pour flour mixture into the meringue. Use a silicon spatula to mix the two together, using a folding motion against the bottom and sides of the bowl. There is a lot of air in the meringue from the whipping that needs to be deflated.
The total number of of ‘folds’ should be about 40. But after around 30 folds you’ll want to be alert to the texture of the mixture so that you don’t miss the stopping point. The stopping point is decided by the fluidity of the batter; it should have a lava-like flow and when you drop a bit of batter back into the bowl, the dropped batter should melt back into the batter in 20 secs.
Pipe the macarons: Scoop half the batter at a time into a piping bag fitted with a largish piping tip. We used a 1/4 inch tip. Place macaron template marked parchment paper onto baking tray, making sure the pencil marks face down, not up. Pipe into the circles, holding the piping tip 1/4 inch above the center of each circle as you pipe. Stop piping before you fill the circles completely as the batter will continue to spread a bit.
After you finish piping take each tray, lift and slam down on your counter. This will nudge any large bubbles still in your batter up and out. Any leftover bubbles can be popped with a pin.
Rest the macarons: Rest the macarons for at least a half an hour or until the batter doesn’t stick to your finger. Ten mins before that half hour is up preheat the oven to 300°F (149°).
Bake the macarons: Bake the macarons for 18 mins. To check if ready peel one edge of a macaron up. If it lifts cleanly from the paper the macaron is baked.
Remove from the oven. Carefully lift the parchment paper up, macarons and all and place back down upside down. This will help prevent hollow macarons. Let cool completely before peeling macarons from the paper.
Fill the macarons: Scoop white chocolate ganache into piping bag. Pipe a mound of chocolate onto one macaron. Place another macaron over, like a sandwich, and press down gently until the chocolate fills all the way to the edges and maybe just a wee bit beyond. Repeat for all macarons.
Rest the macarons: Place all filled macarons into an air tight container and let ‘rest’ in the fridge for 24 hours to allow the filling to soften and infuse flavors into the macarons. It’s super hard to wait that long, but trust me, totally necessary it to achieve the perfecto texture and flavor! Enjoy!