They may be tricky, but they're sooo good!! Plus with each batch you can view them as a pile of cash since each cookie fetches $2-3. You're literally printing money!!!! Plus it's edible, what could be better?
Yield: Roughly 18 cookies
Ingredients:
- 125g Almond Flour
- 150g Powdered Sugar
- 75g Egg White (Don't use farm fresh eggs, use those ones from the supermarket you know are like 6 months old....if you're lucky)
- 30g Granulated Sugar
First and foremost let's talk about almond flour. You can buy it, or you can make it yourself. Just buy some blanched almonds (I prefer slivers) and throw em in a coffee grinder or food processor (coffee grinder is my favorite). Pulse them a few times then sift through a fine mesh sieve, repeat until flour passes through sieve without forcing it.
Mix the almond flour and powdered sugar together, the mixture should be quite fine.
Sift the mixture through a fine sieve and set aside.
Next, beat the egg whites with a hand or stand mixer. Once the eggs begin to froth add the granulated sugar and continue beating.
The egg whites should be beat such that stiff peaks are formed once the whisker is removed. The peaks should not curl over once formed, this typically takes 8-10min.
Add the almond, powdered sugar mixture in thirds and incorporate by folding over with a spatula. Continue until all the dry ingredients are incorporated.
At this point you can add any desired food coloring and continue folding to incorporate. The cookies final color is much lighter than is reflected in the batter. For a typical color I add about 12-16 drops coloring.
Transfer the batter to a piping bag or do as I do and use a zip lock bag (the ghetto method). Pipe out the cookies on parchment paper and set them out for at least 1hr. You can place the parchment paper on a cookie sheet and tap it to help flatten out any peaks.
Preheat you oven to 300F for 30min. Open the door and vent all moisture from the oven, then allow to re-equilibrate to 300F (moisture is your enemy!!) Bake the macarons one sheet at a time on the top rack of your oven for 16min.
The two sets of pictures below are the result of my personal experiments. The first set contained 150g almond flour baked for 14min, the second, 125g as the recipe states. As you can see the macaron is much larger in the first set but has a rougher texture. To achieve a smoother texture the almond flour was reduced at the sacrifice of some macaron foot....sigh.
Remove and allow your macarons to cool completely. Fill your shells with whatever filling you like (jelly, ganache, buttercream) and place in the refrigerator overnight in an air tight container. You can eat them right away, but the texture is much better the next day. Enjoy!!!
TROUBLESHOOTING:
Despite your best efforts, sometimes french macarons don't always come out as you'd expect. This guide will try to provide some answers to common problems.
1.) Moisture: As I stated before, moisture is a big problem when it comes to french macarons. I always encounter problems when relative humidity (RH) is above 70%.
Solution: If possible, try to make these on a warm dry day.
2.) Cracked shells: This result ties into the moisture problem, when the macarons sit for 1hr this allows moisture to escape from the batter and a nice crust to form. When the RH is too high, or the egg whites are very watery cracked shells can happen.
Solution: If conditions do not permit for ideal macaron weather there's a little trick you can try. When baking the macarons crack the oven door a bit.
Observe....these two macarons came from the same batter, only one was baked door open the other door closed. Can you guess which?
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