French Macarons

Whenever I walk into a French bakery, my eye is always caught whenever I see these colorful macarons and I'm always compelled to buy them. I've eaten them multiple times and always believed that these must be super complicated to make; however, when I saw the recipe, I decided it would be a good opportunity to test how far I've come in terms of my baking skills.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup plus 1 TB. blanched almond flour
Pinch of salt
2 egg whites, at room temperature
5 1/2 tsp. granulated sugar

2 drops food coloring (optional)

Filling

The first step was to, "With a sieve, sift together almond flour, confectioner's sugar, and salt into a medium bowl" (Zohn 131). Next, I whipped the eggs and sugar together then folded the almond flour mixture into the egg mixture and added the food coloring (Zohn 131).

After that, the recipe instructed me to, "Pipe shallow...rounds of batter onto a prepared baking sheet" (Zohn 131). For this step, I didn't have a piping bag but I knew it was important. However, I found out that you could use a Ziploc bag as an easy alternative to the piping bag. Next, I baked the macarons at 300°F for 13 minutes then took it out and let it cool for 5 minutes (Zohn 132).

Finally, I filled the macarons up with the filling (Zohn 132). The filling that I used was a Swiss Meringue Buttercream.

Overall, the macarons tasted very good. They didn't look quite as perfect as they do when you get them at the French bakeries but I would say that it was an overall success considering it was the first time that I made these.


What is the most complex food that you've ever made?

Zohn, Alexandra. Baking. New York: Penguin Group (USA), 2014. Print.