DIY French Macarons

Welcome back! Today we're making French macarons, not to be confused with coconut macaroons. You will need:

Macaron shells:

• 3 egg whites

• ¼ cup white sugar 

• 2 cups powdered sugar

• 1 cup almond flour

• pinch of salt

• ¼ tsp cream of tartar 

• Food coloring

Macaron filling:

3 large egg yolks

1 cup sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into pieces

First, with a sieve, sift your powdered sugar and almonds together in a bowl. Then you will be left with some small pieces of almond that didn't go through the sieve. You can put those aside to eat later, or just throw them out.

Then in another large bowl, separate your egg whites, add the granulated sugar, salt, and cream or tartar.

With a hand or stand mixer, mix the ingredients together until stiff peaks form, and you can flip the bowl completely upside down without spilling the mixture.

Now add the food coloring. You're going to want to add about a shade or two darker than you want the mixture, because macarons tend to lose their color in the baking process.

After that, fold in the almond sugar mix with a spatula. Be really careful doing this step because it is very easy to mess up the macarons if you over mix or under mix. If you under mix, your macaroons will be lumpy and cracked. If you over mix, they will be flat and won’t have ridges at the bottom. 65-75 turns of your spatula when folding is about the right amount of time, but it also depends on how strong you are!

Then, put your mixture into a piping bag. I didn't have one, so I put the mixture into a ziplock bag and cut a small hole at the tip. It works just as well as a normal piping bag.

Get a cookie sheet out, and line it with parchment paper. Pipe out little circles with your piping bag, and make sure they're not too close to each other like mine were. Now would be a great time to preheat your oven to 300° F.

After piping, tap your baking sheet a few times against a hard surface to get all the air bubbles out and prevent them from cracking. Leave them there for at least 30 minutes, or until you can touch the surface and it won't stick to your fingertips. Once your oven is preheated, stick them in the oven for 20 minutes. Make sure you don't under bake, or they will stick to the tray.

While the macarons were baking, I made my filling. There are many types of filling you can put in your macarons, but I made a basic vanilla buttercream. I used this recipe:

http://www.marthastewart.com/314898/macaroon-filling

When the macarons are done baking, take them out of the oven and let them cool off. When they're at room temperature, carefully take them off of the baking sheet and and put pipe the filling on to them.

Finally, you're done! These are how mine turned out:

Okay guys, to be honest, this DIY wasn't easy. It took trial and failure to make them right, but when I  made them the right way, I felt really accomplished! It takes patience to make them, but all the work paid off. Overall, these were pretty fun to make, and taste great too! You should really try this one out.

Until next week,

-Vasti