French macarons are known as one of the most delicate, fancy, and beautiful cookies in the world. They are come in different colors and sizes, and they come in endless number of flavors as well. However, especially for our beginner bakers out there, we are quite afraid of these cookies. Why you ask? It's because it is known to be one of the most finickiest cookies to bake. Some say it took them 5 even 15 tries to bake a "perfect" macaron.
What makes a perfect macaron? I feel like perfect macarons really depends on how aesthetically pleasing they are. Well, a perfect macaron has a very smooth surface without any bumps or cracks, and most importantly, they have little "feet" or frills on the bottom. Failing to create a perfect macaron can lead to flat, footless, bumpy, cracked macaron.
Macarons are very popular these days because of their delicate taste as well as their cute and pretty display; however, at fancy French bakeries, they cost around $1~2 per macaron. That's pretty expensive for this tiny little cookie!
I fell in love with macarons when I first had them several years ago. Falling in love with baking recently, I was determined to bake some macarons. However, reading all these recipes and posts regarding how finicky these macarons were, I was quite honestly scared. I read so many blogs that talked about what went wrong even for an experienced baker, I knew I was most likely going to fail.
However, I wasn't going to give up on baking these macarons. I went to the local grocery stores and picked up some ingredients for macarons to bake them, testing some myths regarding macarons! I surprisingly was able to achieve what I think was a pretty successful macarons! You guys don't even know how much I freaked out when I saw the macarons starting to form little feets. (Don't worry if you don't see them for first few minutes. I thought mine didn't have any feet, but when I checked back few minutes later, there they were!)
Here are my Coffee French Macarons with Dark Chocolate Ganache!
Here are some tips that will help you beginner bakers out there when baking macarons.
- I made my own almond flour using blanched silvered almonds. I put them through a processor and sifted them until they were nice and fine. Almond flours in a package were actually very expensive (around $12) but I bought a whole bag of silvered almond for $5 and still have so much left. But honestly, no need to go crazy with the processing. Just make sure you sift though!
- I made my own powder sugar. I actually read a blog post somewhere that homemade powder sugar lead to a cracked, failed macarons. However, I was like what the heck, I'm gonna try it with my homemade powder sugar (because I forgot to buy some), and my macarons turned out fine. I put granulated sugar in the processor and processed it for a good few minutes. However, for these, I put them through two sieves to ensure they were as fine as possible.
- Blend the almond flour and powder sugar together. I found that the mixture became even finer than just simply combining them two together, which I think helped create smoother macarons.
- I used room temperature egg that I submerged in warm water for few minutes. It became stiff peak just fine even though it wasn't aged.
- Use clean, stainless metal bowl to whip up the eggs. You don't want any traces of grease or else it will not form stiff peaks!
- Cream of tartar is not necessary to form stiff peaks!
- Mix the dry ingredients little bit at a time into the meringue. When fold the meringue by scraping the bowl in circular motion and tapping it gently down into the meringue. The batter is good when you fold the batter, the ridges that formed from folding will gradually disappear to create smooth surface. Don't overmix, which will be make the batter watery like pancake batter. Don't undermix, which will make the batter chuncky and thick.
- Use parchment paper. No greased surfaces! Egg whites don't like grease, so greasing your pan is not a good idea. If you don't have parchment paper at home. I actually found that flattened paper cupcake liners work well with meringue cookies. I think they will work the same with macarons as well.
- Zip block bags work just fine as pastry piping bags.
- Bang cookie sheet with macarons on a hard surface. It helps let any air bubbles to pop. Also, it helps shape the cookies into a smoother circles rather than blobs.
- Leave macarons out for 15 minutes at room temperature before baking. Some say macarons need to be out for 30 min to 60 min, but I found 15 minute was plenty to dry the macarons. (Drying the macarons help macarons to grow upwards not sideways which can lead to flat macarons). Also its easier to push down the peaks on the macaron that you piped out.
- Don't worry if your macarons do not have smooth tops. They all smoothed out as the baked. Actually, the one macaron I piped which was perfectly smooth was all cracked when I baked it.
- Bake one pan at a time and position it on a mid-top rack on the oven. Some say top rack is good but it can create the top of the macaron to brown fast or burn so midway between the middle and top rack was good for me!
- Bake at a low temperature and turn the baking sheet the other way around half way through baking. It will help create even feet!
This is a picture of my macarons baking. As you can see, not all my macarons were perfect. Few were cracked and few had crooked feet. However, I found that most turned out fine!
I used this recipe For the Love of Butter: French Coffee Macaron Recipe, but I here are some adjustments I made:
- I made 15 small/medium sized macarons rather than 9 large macarons.
- I found that my macarons were tad bit sweet for my taste when using 2 tbsp of sugar in the meringue. I am probably going to adjust it to 1 tbsp from now on.
- I baked these at 300 degree F (150 degree C) for 16 minutes instead of the 320 degree F (160 degree C) for 15 minutes told in the recipe.
- At the 8 minute mark, I flipped my pan around in the oven.
- I placed my pan in the mid-top rack.
- I made tad bit more ganache because I had more cookies.
Here are some videos I found to be helpful to watch before baking macarons
Sorry this post was so unnecessarily long. If any of you beginner bakers want to try baking some macarons, try using my tips! If you have any questions, feel free to comment down below!
Happy baking everyone :)
