How to make Perfect macarons

Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen, I'm giving you all my tips and tricks to make perfect French macaron. So let's get started. First off, we're gonna deal with the dry ingredients. Not a lot of prep to do, but grab two rimmed baking sheets and line them with parchment paper. I'm gonna be using my food processor and a sifter for a little bit in the beginning of this recipe. We're gonna combine powdered sugar and almond meal. I'm actually gonna sift this first, so let's grab a medium bowl and a nice sieve. You don't want your sieve to be too fine or too coarse, and I would say this sieve is like about a medium, medium mesh. One and a half cups of blanched almond flour is 168 grams, and I highly recommend using a scale if you're making macarons. These are gonna be a little bit on the fussy side, so you don't wanna add too much of anything. It should be just the right amount. I'm also adding in one cup or 120 grams of powdered sugar. If you just gave this a little sift, like do-do-do-do-do, sifted it out, and then went on with your recipe, you would see macarons that are so lumpy and not shiny. It's wild. So we really have to take the fineness down by processing this with your food processor. You're gonna sift this out, and then we can transfer this to the food processor and start pulsing. A French macaron is not the same as a macaroon. They're actually two different branches of the same tree. The recipe got altered quite a bit to make macaroons, which are, actually I have some here, light and airy, have no flour in them, lots of egg whites, but instead of almond flour, we use coconut. They look like this. They're clumpy, rough, delicious, and so easy to make. It's like a foolproof recipe. This is the French version, so it's much more precise. You can use your fingers to gently break up any larger pieces. If you end up with large pieces of almonds that are hanging out here, we're just gonna discard that. Don't try and force them through your sieve. So all that just gets discarded away, or you can munch on it if you want. Set your sieve aside, and now we can transfer this mixture into the bowl of your food processor. Pop the top on, and now we can process for 30 seconds, and I can stop and scrape the side down if I see things accumulating here, which they tend to on my processor. That was 20 seconds. Just scooch this stuff off the corner. Don't try and be safe and process this too much, though, because you'll end up with almond, like a very sweet almond butter. Okay. Lovely. Now, we're gonna sift it again. Sift it right into the bowl, and I would be on the neater side here because everything is weighed out perfectly. I've accounted for a little bit of the almond flour getting discarded because I know it's gonna be usually about a teaspoon or so of coarse stuff, but you don't wanna lose a lot onto your countertop. The crucial part is when we introduce the egg whites. That's where things can go astray, but there's one other thing that you can't control, and that's the weather. Just like any other time when you're making something with fluffed up egg whites, you want a dry day, not a rainy day. Rainy days are gonna be really not good for this recipe. The tops of the cookies have to air dry, which takes forever when it's super humid. And in fact, you might have to use some secondary tricks like having them under a fan or all these other things. And then egg whites just do not like fluffing up when it's humid. So make this recipe on a nice dry day, and you'll be extra happy. And you can see here, it really compacts in your food processor, and you end up with these little sweet almond tablets. You don't want that, no, no, no. It's really important to sieve this again. Macaron keep really well in the refrigerator, and they're actually really supposed to be eaten the next day, because the filling that you add will moisten the cookie on the inside and give you a nice chewy texture. They're still delicious fresh, but better the next day, just like soup. With my fingers, I can feel this is so much finer now. That's great. Today, we're making a classic vanilla macaron. I might do some raspberry centers in a few of them, but there are an infinite number of flavors you can make. And once you become confident in the basics, you can expand your repertoire and try different recipes out, make your own up, and of course, have a real good time with different fillings. By the way, if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button. There's two new recipes every single week. Some of them are really easy. Some of them are challenging. Once again, I have a little bit of discard. That's fine. This looks lovely. We're gonna set this aside. French macaron are just sandwich cookies, but they can be finicky. I'm gonna show you all the things that can go wrong so that you can do it right, hopefully the first time, and make beautiful, delicate, delicious cookies. So these cookies are in some ways very easy, but there is a small zone for perfection. They can be underbaked, where they'll be soft, not crisp, and the tops will sink. They could be overbaked and burnt and brittle. They could be hollow on the inside and just shatter when you take a bite, which is not acceptable. If you undermix during the macaronage stage, they'll be stiff, texture will be bumpy, and it's not gonna work out nicely. If you overwhip it, puddle, not gonna hold its shape. It will become kind of brittle, and you still won't have that proper texture. If you just add your almond flour in right now, instead of whizzing it up and making sure it's really fine, you'll have a bumpy texture to your cookies, and they won't look as refined. This got pulled out of the oven too soon, so you can see the foot went out because the foot was very soft out of the oven, and then the top collapsed as well. All these little things will add up and make problems. Now, we can deal with the eggs, and there are a few things I have to tell you about this. For this recipe, we'll need a very specific amount of egg white, and here, I highly encourage you to use a scale. The scale is so important for any recipe, but for things like this, it really makes a difference and takes a lot of the guesswork out. I'm gonna separate three eggs very carefully. Yolks in one. As you crack each egg, we're gonna pop those into a bowl. The whole point is that we don't wanna worry about one broken yolk ruining the whole batch. Into the bowl, and last egg. Macaron are actually an Italian recipe, specifically Venetian from the 8th and 9th century, and these were super simple, very humble cookies that monks would make with almonds and egg whites and sugar. Boy, have times changed things. So here, three egg whites, and now, and I had a shell too, unacceptable. I'm reserving the yolks for a French buttercream that I will fill these with, but anything is possible. You could have American buttercream, you could have a Swiss or Italian buttercream, a whipped ganache, curd in the center, the list goes on. All right, zero your scale out, and three egg whites. Meh, so imprecise, what size are the eggs? 100 grams of egg whites, yes. That was exactly 100 grams, amazing. You might not be so lucky, sometimes I buy large eggs and they are tiny, I swear. Sometimes they're massive, so it really depends. Set your yolk aside, just cover these up because they will dry out. So now that I have my 100 grams of egg whites, I can add this into my very clean stand mixer bowl. We're gonna mix this on medium speed for about 30 seconds until the egg whites begin to foam. Wait, today I'm using some eggs, and these I bought at the beginning of the week. They're not fresh, fresh eggs. There are a lot of different tips and tricks about the egg whites. Using older eggs, separating your eggs out like a week ahead of time, and then having them covered with some plastic with holes in it so that they slowly dry out a little bit. I've done these and I cannot really tell the difference. So in my opinion, what makes or breaks the recipe is the step called macronage. That is where things can go wrong. If you want, use the older eggs. Try aging them, let me know how you like it. Okay, once they've foamed up, it's time to add an acid to help stabilize the meringue. Your acid of choice is cream of tartar. This is a powder derived from the winemaking process. A quarter of teaspoon. If you don't have this, you could use a quarter teaspoon of white vinegar or lemon juice. We're gonna continue mixing on medium while adding in a half cup of granulated sugar, 100 grams, a tablespoon at a time. So one tablespoon, taking my time, drizzling it in, no one's in a rush. What is time? These macaron are made with a French meringue, which is just adding sugar to egg whites while mixing. There are variations that you could play around with where you make a Swiss meringue or even an Italian meringue and that's the basis for your macarons. I've done that before, but I feel like this recipe is a little bit more user friendly and reliable. I will say though that if you use a Swiss meringue, you can get a glossy macaron. But if you do this nice and slow and let the sugar incorporate and melt into the egg whites, your meringue's gonna be perfect. I've noticed that where I've added the sugar, it's kind of just hanging out on the edge of the bowl and not incorporating, so grab a spatula and just give the bowl a scrape down. Back to sugar. And my last bit. These macarons are gonna be a classic vanilla. There are many options for flavor, which you can explore later, but let's keep it classic and simple today. One teaspoon of vanilla extract. And you'll notice today I'm measuring everything. And I do see some sugar, so I'm scraping it down one last time. You could have beautiful, creamy white macaron. I would like mine to be a nice, cheerful pink today. So if you're coloring your macarons, this is when you color them, not after the almond flour has gone in. Add one or so drops until you've reached your desired color. I will say it's much better here to use a gel food coloring. If you're doing the grocery store, kind of very watery kinds, too much water is getting added. So I'm just gonna pause this and add my food coloring in. I'm adding one big, healthy drop. Back to mixing on medium. We're gonna mix for about six minutes or until stiff peaks form. One of the biggest problems I had when I was learning how to make macaron was the meringue. So many recipes say to do soft peaks. No! You have to have beautiful, stiff peaks because we're gonna add all of the powdered sugar and almond flour in. And once you start piping them, if the meringue was too soft, they become these giant pools and it's horrifying. So I'll show you what this will look like. Six minutes. Medium. This color looks very bright right now, but it'll get toned down once we add the rest of the ingredients in and after they bake. I have to caution you here to not beat your meringue too fast. If you go to a higher speed, you're gonna create larger bubbles and that does something horrifying. They'll bake and they look perfect. You'll be so happy. But the minute you take a bite or you try and pick one up, you'll notice there's a paper-thin shell on top with a giant gap. And they just kind of crumble. So those larger bubbles will create that shell. Medium speed, low and slow is the way to go. It's been six minutes and ooh! Look what we have here. A beautiful stiff peak. Do you see that? It's shiny. It's holding a lovely sharp point and it's not dripping. So this is perfect. You don't wanna over whip, so mind your time. Don't walk away. Maybe set a timer. This is gonna work really nicely. Tap this back into the bowl. My mixer's done. We have to add all of this powder into our beautiful meringue without destroying all the air bubbles. So we're gonna do this in thirds. Grab about a third of your mixture, sprinkle it in, and you're gonna fold this. So a real fold means you're using your spatula, you're going down, cutting through, coming up, and down again. So it's almost like making little circular currents in your bowl and you're moving the bowl as you go so you're evenly mixing without taking out all the air bubbles. Cut through the bottom, bring it back up, cut back down, and continue. This isn't heart surgery so you don't have to be excruciatingly careful but be mindful. Be gentle. It looks so pretty right now. Okay. Once that first bit is added in, another third. Our last batch goes in and you just continue folding. It's really relaxing to be honest. I've incorporated all my almond flour and the sugar but look at this nonsense. This is super just like lumpy and looks weird and sad. All these giant air bubbles here. If I piped this out, my macaron would be a disaster. Unacceptable. They wouldn't be glossy. They wouldn't have feet. They would just be delicious and who wants that? Here you're gonna do a very important step called macronage. That is where you are forcing out more of the air bubbles until you have a perfect ribbon descending from your spatula that can hold its shape for 10 seconds. I'll show you what that looks like. It's gonna be kind of like a pink lava situation but for now, let's begin. Use your spatula and you're going to move the batter up from the bottom and as you do, you're gently pressing. Look at those giant air bubbles. Nobody wants that. Bring it down and bring it back up and then you just bring it back down and repeat. If I bring my spatula up now, we can see that we have much more of like a cohesive, flowy batter but it's still a bit gloopy. So another set. Popping this up. These giant air bubbles are your enemy. Take that back down and take a look. Still not right. Just do this in stages, checking in between until we have a nice, beautiful pink lava that'll hold its shape. The test is a figure eight. You want to use your spatula, let the batter drizzle down and you make the shape of an eight and the eight should stay there until like for 10 seconds. It's not a bad idea to clean your spatula off every once in a while because you have all this un-macronaged batter clinging onto it. Swooping it up. Let's take a look. It is almost there. It's really holding its shape but it's just not kind of flowy enough. So I'm gonna do a really gentle final one. You can see here there's less large bubbles. It's also a bit shinier. This looks perfect. It's glossy and now it's holding its shape. Take a look. Grab a large piping bag and you want a medium circle piping tip. This is a 1A. And we're gonna transfer the batter in and get to piping. I remember making macarons and during the learning process I would get to this step and be so excited but as I filled my piping bag it was just falling out. That's a bad sign. So if that's happening to you, accept these will be delicious but not perfect. A little dripping is fine by the way. It's fine to have a cookie that tastes delicious but doesn't look perfect. So don't beat yourself up if it's just not exactly what you expected. It could very well take some time and tries for you to feel more comfortable. My baking sheets have parchment paper but I'm gonna use just a little bit of my batter to hold the corners down. This is glue so that the paper doesn't lift off as I pipe. Now we're gonna pipe one inch dollops onto the baking sheet and watch my hand as I finish the movement because you don't want to have a big tail coming out. So starting just above, you're going to press and then stop pressing, release and give it a little twirl. I should also point out that your piping bag should be straight up and down, not at an angle. If it's at an angle, that is one of the reasons that you could have macarons that are baking with one side coming up perfectly and the other side stuck down. We want a nice even foot. There are so many fun shapes that you can make as well. I've seen teddy bears, the works, a really easy fun shape to do is a heart. You're just taking your piping tip and starting on one side, you pull down, then put the other side and you pull down, pull down. It's also a good sign that I've been piping and I haven't come across air bubbles. If you don't do the macaronage enough, oftentimes you'll have burps from your piping tip as those air bubbles accumulate. Straight up and down, release and twist. You should give these about two inches of space because they will spread slightly. Pause, take a breath and by the way, look at this. See how my paper is coming up at an angle because it's a little bit too large? Just that can throw the macarons off and make them scooch in one direction. So since I'm just noticing this now and I didn't cut it earlier, I'm folding the paper so it fits in nicely and all the macarons have a flat surface to bake up on. For the most part, I didn't crowd the edge. It's more in the center because you want this to have a really even heat. So not too close to these metal walls because that'll overheat them and they won't rise evenly. You want this top shell to just rise up in the oven and you have a beautiful little foot underneath that dome. Not a foot that's askew, not a foot that's bulging out. It should be almost straight up and down. If you wanna be intense and super careful, take a level, make sure your oven racks are nice and even and not as slant. Right now, you'll see the texture is fairly glossy. As they dry out, they'll become more dull but you'll also notice the tops are relatively smooth. If I hadn't pulsed, pulsed, pulsed, pulsed, pulsed and sifted out the almond flour, it would be pretty rough. All right, there are some big bubbles in here though. No matter how good your macaronage is. So we have to tap the pan. I don't like loud noises. Let's tap. I'm so pleased. This is one of my best batches I've ever made because I only have a couple tiny little bubbles coming out. The tapping will remove some of the larger bubbles that forces them to come to the surface but it also flattens your macarons out a bit so that they bake up perfectly. This is nice. We are gonna set this aside and remember, I said you do not want to make this on a humid day because meringue does not like humidity but also because these have to dry out. You need to have them so dry that you can touch them and the surface won't be marred. In normal circumstances, about 40 minutes of drying time is required. If you're making these on a wetter day, you might wanna have these underneath like your extractor hood or in front of a fan just to air dry them a little bit more because they take so long to dry when the humidity's a bit higher. 40 minutes on your countertop and we'll come back and check what they look like. In the meantime, I'm gonna pipe the rest of my macaron. Towards the end of your rest time, preheat your oven to 270 degrees Fahrenheit. Once these are done, you should be able to gently touch the cookies without the tops being disturbed, meaning they're dry. They've formed a dry film on top like this. My macaron are ready to go into the oven. They're gonna bake for 16 to 18 minutes. After eight minutes, you will rotate the pan 180 degrees. You'll see beautiful feet forming and everything will be great. You can either bake these in two ovens if you have a double oven or just at different levels. In you go. Once your macaron are in the oven, we can make a beautiful filling and here you have choices. You can do a whipped ganache, you can do a classic buttercream, Swiss, Italian, but I think the classic filling is a French buttercream so let's make that. In a saucepan, we're gonna combine water and sugar, specifically half a cup or 100 grams of granulated sugar and three tablespoons of water. We're gonna keep this on low, stirring occasionally until the sugar is dissolved. You should have a wooden spoon here and a thermometer would be quite handy. If you're a bit nervous about making French buttercream and want all the tips and tricks, click up here for my French buttercream video. Gives you everything that can go wrong and how to fix it and make sure this buttercream turns out perfectly. But to be honest, it's quite straightforward. And if you haven't had French buttercream before, it is so custardy. You're using egg yolks, butter, and sugar to make a beautiful, silky, rich frosting. My sugar's dissolved so I'm increasing to medium high and bringing this to a boil. We need our sugar to be 240 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the softball stage. While the sugar heats up, we're gonna add five egg yolks into the bowl of our mixer and mix them with our whisk attachments. They're nice and foamy. Go for medium speed and we're mixing until thickened and foamy. My yolks are thickened and foamy. My sugar is at 240, so I'm gonna slowly drizzle this in while mixing on medium low. You're gonna have some sugar that flies up. That's okay. We're gonna continue mixing on medium until the bowl isn't warm to the touch anymore. If you wanted to accelerate the process, grab some frozen peas and just pack the bowl so it cools down more quickly. While this mixes, you wanna make sure you have one cup or 226 grams of room temperature butter. Okay, just wanna show you the texture. This is like a lighter, sunnier color and it's a little thick, but not very. The thickness will come from the butter we add. Back to medium low and we're gonna add our butter a tablespoon at a time. Your butter should be a nice room temperature right now. And by the way, if you wanted to make a big batch of this frosting for some reason, you could totally double the recipe really easily. Second stick, last tablespoon of butter. Right now, we're gonna add a pinch of salt in, a little contrast, and a teaspoon of vanilla. At this point, I just wanna show you, you have a really beautiful texture already. This is not even done. You can see, it's like a silky, pipeable custard. Continue mixing for five to six minutes until smooth and creamy. And then, we can add some food coloring if we want uniformly pink macaron, which I do. After five more minutes of mixing, I have a beautiful, really silky and lighter frosting. This is delicious as is. I'm just gonna dye it pink so it matches my cookies. A drop of violet to counteract the orange. A little more pink. All mixed up, appropriately pink, and now, we can get to filling our cookies. If you're making this frosting, you could've chosen any flavor, by the way. I think rose water would've been really nice and could've actually paired with the vanilla so that you have a pink, rose-flavored macaron. Fill your piping bag up. You can either snip the tip off or use a smaller, round tip. It depends on whether or not you wanna fill the cookie completely or just have a ring with some jam or ganache in the center. My macaron baked up very nicely. I have a proper foot. It's nice and shiny on top. And even the hearts came out nicely. The final test is when you take a bite, though, because you want the texture to be really full on the inside, not hollow. It should have a nice, very light and airy, chewy inside. Flip half of your cookies upside down, and you wanna find matching pairs. So, one slightly bigger, find a slightly bigger one. Same for the smaller ones. They all match nicely. So, on the reverse side, I'm gonna pipe a ring of my buttercream frosting. And for fun, on the inside, I'm adding a dollop of raspberry jam. Find its mate and close it up. A perfect, casual little cookie sandwich. Repeat this process with all of your cookies. And here, I'll remind you that these are actually better a day or two later. So, you wanna have whatever filling you used soften the very bottoms of the cookies so they're really nice and chewy. Very nice, very delicate, and so pretty. Same for the hearts. So cute. And of course, you could just fill them completely with your beautiful pink vanilla buttercream. Your macaron will last four to seven days in the refrigerator or up to two months in the freezer. And just like that, your beautiful, dainty French macaron are ready to enjoy. A symphony of delicate flavor with lots of beautiful textures. Crisp on the outside, soft and slightly chewy on the inside with a beautiful, rich, creamy filling. I hope you get a chance to make this delicious recipe and if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button and check out my French playlist.