Complete Guide to Making Macarons Macaron Recipe

If you ever wanted to make macaron, but are intimidated by this finicky French cookie, then fear not. I'm here to save you with all my tips and tricks to make them right the first time. And if you like this video, don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe. You're watching Preppy Kitchen, where I, John Kanell, teach you how to make delicious homemade dishes to share with your family and friends. These macaron will be ready before you know it. So let's get started. First off, let's talk about the eggs. I'm using three large egg whites for this recipe, but there's a catch. I'm not gonna use exactly three large egg whites, so I'll be using my scale. Best practice is to crack your eggs separately, one at a time, and then separate the yolks out. You don't wanna throw away all the egg whites because one egg broke. Zeroed my scale out, so let's add the egg white in. Your clean hands are the best way to separate egg yolks. Okay, repeat that process for the other three eggs. So I have 110 grams right now. I'm gonna spoon some out so I have exactly the right amount. 100 grams exactly. Set this aside, wash your hands, and we're gonna get the rest of our ingredients out. For this recipe, I will be using my food processor. Here's a little bit of a secret. If you look at any brand of almond flour, it'll say super fine. This is technically true, but when you open the bag up, you're gonna see fairly large pieces of almond in here, and in order to get a professional-looking, smooth macaron, you wanna have pulverized, very, very fine ingredients. So this is gonna go into the food processor to break it up, and we'll be sifting and processing, sifting and processing. So I'm adding 140 grams, or about 1 1⁄2 cups of almond flour in here, and you can see there's big lumps in here, it clumped up. You really wanna break it up. Okay, the other primary ingredient in the macaron is sugar. So we're gonna use 130 grams of confectioner's sugar. Zero the scale out. So this is about a cup of confectioner's sugar, but really, you can pack it down, you can fluff it up, and change the amount that you're actually having in your measuring cup. The scale is so much more accurate. Set our scale aside, and now we're gonna process this up, whiz, whiz, whiz, so that it breaks all the pieces up and mixes it together, and I'll show you a couple of things that I do to get things the right way. If you don't have a food processor at home, you could actually blend this up in your blender, and then sift. It's gonna give you a very similar result, and it's what I did before I got a food processor. It's kinda crazy, but every once in a while, I will take the top off and give it a good shake. A lot of the super fine pieces fall to the bottom, and you wanna break those up and let it all mix. So it really whizzed away. I don't wanna turn it into almond butter. Like right now, we processed it up, but look at these giant lumps. And right now, I'm gonna just kinda force everything through the sifter the first time, and then I'm gonna sift it again, and if there's any big pieces, I'll just discard them. So you'll be folding this into your meringue, and that is a whole process. You don't wanna be folding in big clumps or have a clump you have to worry about, so get a nice powdery, fine mixture. I discarded some of the big clumps, and this is ready to go. I'm gonna set it aside, and now we will be making the body of our macaron, which is composed of a meringue. A really common mistake when people are making these cookies is the meringue. It's not stiff enough, so I wanna show you what it should look like. I'm gonna use my scale one last time. I need 90 grams of granulated sugar for this, and that is around half a cup, but it's a little bit less. Who washed this bowl? Do you know who washed the bowl? If you're circumspect, go ahead and just wipe it down with vinegar or lemon juice. You don't want any grease in there. Pop that whisk on. We're gonna add the egg whites right into the bowl, and before you get started, just make sure you have some cream of tartar handy. This is an acid. It actually comes from the winemaking process, and it's gonna help stabilize the egg whites in the meringue. You could also sub in a couple drops of white vinegar instead. You're subbing it out for a different acid, basically. Mix on high. Once it gets frothy, we'll dump in our quarter teaspoon of cream of tartar. One quarter teaspoon, in you go. Okay, now we're gonna mix on high. Actually, this is one of the most important parts, turning the mixer off for you. You wanna gently, slowly spoon the sugar in, so watch how I do it. It goes in very slowly, because the sugar's dissolving as the egg whites mix. Gives you the best meringue. If you just dump the sugar in, it's not a good scene. Slowly, ever so slowly. Just spoon it out. You're in no hurry. Now, we're at the soft peak stage. This is what it looks like. You lift it up. It's a beautiful peak, but it flops over at the end. That's totally fine. This is the stage where we're gonna add our vanilla, and if you're inclined, the food coloring as well. Two drops should be good. Okay, mix it up on high. After just a little bit of mixing, I can see a stiff peak. Maybe it'd go, ah, a little bit. You just wanna have a peak that holds up against gravity. The final test is to see if it holds up against gravity over your head. I'm gonna finish whisking it by hand. I know how the meringue should feel. It'll give me some resistance, and this way, you won't overmix the batter. You wanna have a stiff peak, but if your meringue is too stiff, it could lead to hollow macaron, which is not good. This is not as close as I thought. I'm gonna run the mixer more. Okay, take a look at that. Perfectly firm, nice and stiff, and the final step is to see if it's totally ready. It is because it's not falling on my head. It should stay in the bowl. Ready to fold. Get your dry mixture out, and we're gonna spoon maybe around a third of a cup into our meringue. There we go, like two big spoonfuls. We're gonna fold this in now. The folding is a crucial step. It's called the macaronage. Not with that accent, though. So here, you're gently folding in the dry ingredients. It's really funny because normally, if you're making a cake and folding in egg whites with the dry ingredients, you're gonna be so delicate. You're like, oh my gosh, every single air bubble is very important to me in my baking. For a macaron, it's a little bit different because yes, you wanna be gentle, but you're also gonna have to be a little rough with this. You wanna get some of the air bubbles out. It has too many right now. So that little bit is folded in. We're gonna add in like another half of the mixture and fold that in as well, and when I fold, I am scraping the bottom of the bowl, cutting down the middle, scraping, and cutting. You're not mixing. You're folding things in gently to preserve the meringue. Once that's mostly incorporated, we can add the rest of the dry ingredients in. We're down to one bowl. This is a success. You want this to gracefully fall from your spatula. It should be able to form a figure eight. Right now, nothing is drizzling down, so I need to keep folding. Okay, so it's all folded in now, but look at these big air bubbles. This is unacceptable. So the next stage of macronage is to start pressing out the air bubbles. So gently press the meringue up the sides, and as you do so, you're changing the consistency of the batter. Okay, this batter is looking beautiful. I'm very excited. Here is the test. As it drips down, you should be able to form a figure eight. It just formed an eight, so that means I'm ready to stop. I'm gonna pipe my macaron out with a 1A tip. It's like a medium-large round. Normally, I would say just snip the tip off the piping bag, but the piping is really important for these cookies because if you go into an angle, if they're a little wonky, you'll be able to see that in the finished product. I actually like to use a heavier weight baking sheet with walls. I found that if I was using a cookie sheet which didn't have any walls, I would just get uneven rises in my little macarons, so the walled one, I feel, is the best. We're gonna add just a dab of meringue to the corners to hold our sheet down, and now put a piece of parchment paper on. I've made these using silicon mats, and I find the parchment paper is just better. If you have any flavor requests, let me know in the comments. I'm all ears. I kinda wanted to try a chocolate macaron next, but maybe green tea, I don't know. Now we're gonna pipe things out, roughly the size of a quarter, maybe a bit bigger or smaller. It's kind of up to you and what size cookie you want, and give them about an inch of space in between. Here's how it goes. You're gonna squeeze it out, stop squeezing, and then give it a twist. That will finish it off, and it'll have a nice shape. Squeeze straight down, stop squeezing, give it a twist, and then just repeat that process, and your macaron will sag and spread a bit. That's okay. If they really turn into a soup, that's not okay. We worked so hard to get it exactly right. There's still a couple air bubbles hiding in here, waiting to sabotage you, so what do we wanna do next? We're gonna tap it down. You're just gonna shock those air bubbles out and bring them to the top, and if you see a couple just below the surface and they're not popping, you can use a skewer or a pin, and then just give them a little bit of a deflate. When your macaron are ready, you'll see they're less shiny, they're more matte, and they're dry to the touch. I'll be able to put my finger gently on top, and I won't get any meringue on my finger. All right, set these aside and be back in a flash. After about 40 minutes, my macaron have become less glossy on top, and I can run my finger across without disturbing the surface. These are ready to go into the center rack of your oven, which is preheated to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. They're gonna bake for about 14 minutes, give or take, and I like to flip them over halfway through. It really depends on your oven, so keep an eye out for them. You know they're ready once they've risen up dramatically and they're dry underneath. My macaron spent 14 minutes in the oven at 300 degrees. Once they've cooled down a bit, you can fill them with anything you'd like. A whipped ganache, American buttercream, everything will be delicious in this. My all-time favorite, which I'm using today, is French buttercream. It has a lot of egg yolks, butter, and sugar, and it's pure magic. Pipe along the edge, and I'm using a small round tip, and then fill the inside, and sandwich those two pieces together just like that. They're ready to enjoy, although they're gonna taste best and have the most amazing texture if you let them sit in the fridge, cover them up in a container, of course, for a few days. If you like this recipe, check out my French playlist. So good. I'll see you in the next video.