French Macarons Recipe

French Macarons Recipe

Today I decided tho share with you a recipe for French Macarons. This is the first time I made them. The recipe for French Macarons is pretty much the same in all the cook books and food blogs I looked. I decided to try Beth's foolproof macaron recipe from the Youtube Channel Entertaining With Bath. It was explained very well and did not seem too difficult. And honestly it was not hard to make them. You just have to prepare everything you need, follow the instructions and be patient.




Here is the recipe, which makes 24 complete sandwich cookies:

Ingredients
3 egg whites (they need to be 1 day old, so make sure you separate them from the egg yolks and keep them at room temperature for between 12-24 hours)
1/2 cup white (caster) sugar (50g)
2 cups confectioners sugar (200g)
1 cup almond flour (120g)
pinch salt
the recipe advises to use 1/4 tsp cream of tartar, but I did not have it so I did not use it

If you can not find almond flour, since it is not widely available, here is a great video on how to make it yourself : check here

I also followed the recipe for butter cream filling , but instead of raspberry I made strawberry buttercream filling


Strawberry Butter Cream
1/4 cup butter (60g)
1 cup powder sugar
1 cup fresh strawberries (150g) worked through a sieve to extract 3 tablespoons of juice

Method
Macarons
Preheat oven to 300F

Line packing pans with parchment paper. Do not add any grease.

Beat egg whites until they start to make a foam and then add white sugar and salt. Whip on high until they form a peak that stands upright.

Add food coloring. The recipe advises to add a little more to make the egg whites a shade or two darker, since color fades after baking. I used a little too much of super red gel food coloring. I used Americolor Food Color Super Red.
Mix a little more so the color gets distributed evenly.

Sift almond flour and powdered sugar. You'll get some remains of larger lumps of almond pieces. You need the mixture to be smooth , so you don't get any lumps in the cookies and they don't crack.

Fold almond flour/powder sugar mixture into egg white mixture. Be careful, because if you under mix macarons will be cracked and lumpy and will have no feet. 65-75 turns of your spatula should be the right amount of time.

Transfer batter to a pastry bag. 

Using a wide round tip pipe 1 inch rounds on a baking sheet , that you lined with  parchment paper. 

Tap the pan hard at least 3-5 times to release air bubbles. This will prevent the cookies from cracking.

Let them sit out for between 30 minutes to 1 hour. This will dry them a little before placing them in the hot oven. When they are dry, they can't spread out in the oven and they rise up and form feet.

Bake for 20 minutes. Do not undertake or they will stick to your pan. Some of mine did stick to the parchment paper and it was not easy to separate from it. I recommend that you remove them from the baking sheet in 3-5 minutes after you take them out of the oven.

Butter Cream
Whip butter in a mixer until fluffy. Add powder sugar. The original recipe suggests using 3/4 cup of powdered sugar, but it did not seem enough to me, so I used 1 cup powdered sugar. Put strawberries in a food processor/blender and brews a few times. Then set a self over a bowl and run the mixture through to extract the juice. You only need 3 tablespoons of it. Add strawberry juice to the butter cream and whip until well combined. It will take at least a few minutes. Transfer to a pastry bag, fitted with a small tip.

Reverse cookie shells on their backs and pipe small amount of butter cream on one of them. Top with the other shell and you are done. (I've heard that you should not eat them right away , you need to wait for a day, storing them in the fridge, but I can't agree with that. You've come this far making them, so nothing should stop you to try them).

Now you can enjoy your home made Valentine's Day French Macarons.