How to Make Macarons | Bake It Up a Notch with Erin McDowell

the possibilities are really endless when it comes to macaroons so no macaron we're gonna have to have a counter anytime i say macaroon you have to put a little like on the screen because it's macaron not macaroon welcome to this episode of bake it up a notch where we are talking all things macaron i am really excited for this episode because so many of you requested it you have been in my inbox and writing in the comments that you really wanted a macaron episode so we wanted to break it down for you and show you all the things that you need to know not only to make macarons successfully but also all the fun you can have with them because there are so many possibilities here i really think that macarons are a bit of a baking rite of passage for so many people they feel like once they can tackle that successfully they've really like accomplished something so let's tackle this together you can do it i promise it's going to be a ton of fun as always in this episode we're going to show you all the equipment all the tips and tricks you need to get you through the process and bake a successful macaron but we're also going to show you all the different places where it could go wrong and when possible how to fix it so if you like this episode or past episodes of bake it up a notch do me a favor and please like and subscribe so you can be made aware when new episodes come available every two weeks let's get baking [Music] before we get started on making macarons let's talk about some of the equipment you're going to need to make it happen now macrons have a tendency to be known as very very finicky but that isn't necessarily true when it comes to the equipment there's really just a few things you're going to need because there's only kind of a few points where that equipment is especially critical so you are going to need an electric mixer is it possible to make macarons without one absolutely but the base of macarons is a meringue and the height of that meringue is essential to getting the cookie right so it can take a very long time to whip a meringue by hand i honestly don't know how they did it way back when before the days of the electric mixer but i also find that the electric mixer really yields the most consistent results so when we're talking about learning how to make something don't tire your arm out before you even get to the process of piping them use the electric mixer and you're going to need the whip attachment that's what we're going to use to whip up our meringue you're also going to need a few different kind of sundry ingredients from around your kitchen a sifter this is really important because we sift the dry ingredients several times to aerate them as well as combine them before we get started it's really important that everything is as fine as possible that's going to give us the smoothest macaron you're also going to need your silicone spatulas for mixing i would opt for a silicone spatula with a slightly wider head so that you can kind of perform the folding as efficiently as possible you're also going to use pastry bags and piping tips macarons are typically piped and they're typically just piped into rounds but they can actually also be piped into other shapes i also use different tips when filling the macarons so i've got some star tips here as well and that's because sometimes i like to use a little bit of a different effect on the interior it'll really help kind of just let it pop and look even fancier you'll need some mixing bowls for mixing your macaron when it comes off the mixer you can use just the same mixing bowl you whipped in but i typically like to transfer it so that i've got a little more room to work finally you're going to need parchment paper and a baking sheet the thing i always like to remind people is look for the flattest baking sheets you have if you have some that are a little bit warped at the edges they're going to warp your macarons too so look for the flattest baking sheets you got and when it comes to parchment paper you can use plain parchment paper or you can draw yourself some little stencils like i did here so i used a round cookie cutter to draw the stencil size that i need all over the parchment paper sometimes people also use silicone baking mats for macarons so you can definitely use that instead and they even sell silicone baking mats that have these kind of guides already on them so if you have something like that you can use those you can also go freehand without a guide that's up to you so when it comes down to it it's just a little bit of equipment and it's mostly about knowing what to look for as we start the process to get these macarons just right [Music] before we dive into how to make the macaron batter let's talk a little bit about the basics of what a macaron is it's actually an incredibly simple cookie with a really minimal ingredient list and with that small ingredient list comes a little bit of precision because we have to handle those ingredients just right to get that end result the correct way to make a macaron they're often called french macarons because they are sometimes made with a french meringue but you can also make italian macarons or swiss macarons by using an italian meringue or swiss meringue you can get more information on the different types of meringues in our meringue episode of bake it up a notch i always have opted for french meringues because they're the simplest of the three because they don't require any heating or cooking of the eggs ahead of time and i view that macarons are already a fairly complicated cookie so i like to keep it simple not having to heat or cook the egg whites however heating the egg whites cooking the sugar for an italian meringue or heating the eggs and sugar together for a swiss meringue does make a slightly more stable macaron and if you struggle consistently with macarons that might be the best way to go like i said i like to keep it as simple as possible for an already complicated cookie so we go with the french style of meringue we make a meringue we whip it to stiff peaks and the structure of that meringue is what's responsible for giving the final macaron its texture we start folding the dry ingredients into that meringue creating this ideal texture which sometimes people refer to it as almost the texture of lava but the technical term would be macrinage we're trying to achieve this ideal texture which is going to be responsible for us being able to pipe the batter and in the oven it's going to rise just a little bit for a glossy top with a little bit of a footed edge the foot is this little kind of ruffly bit at the edge they are just wonderful in so many ways because they are naturally gluten free this is a flourless cookie it's made with almond flour it's a really chewy delicious almond cookie and they can also be endlessly customized they can be tinted with different colors and different flavors used you can add sprinkles and different decorating techniques we're going to talk about all of that today so the key to making a really beautiful macaron is getting that meringue just right but after that you can mix and match and finish them in so many incredible ways so let's get started making the batter we're going to use our electric mixer here but before we even get into the mixer and start the process of making the meringue we need to get our dry ingredients ready so our dry ingredients are powdered sugar confectioners sugar almond flour and salt and i'm just dumping these all into a sifter we're gonna sift this onto a piece of parchment paper now we're sifting this for two different reasons we're sifting it to help combine our dry ingredients as you often do if you were making a chocolate macaron there might be cocoa powder in here too if you're making one with spices there might be some different spices in here whatever your dry ingredients are of course sifting helps to combine them but it's also doing one more job than that which is that it's aerating it we're trying to get these ingredients as light as possible because that's going to make it as easy as possible to fold it into a very light mixture like meringue so this is what typically happens we've got clumps so we can just crush those most of those are going to be almond flour when you're buying almond flour for macarons you should look for very fine almond flour and if you're unable to find it or if you're making your own almond flour you may have to start by sifting just the almond flour alone to make sure you don't have any large pieces because any big clumps of almond flour which can be common with coarser ground almond flour or if you make it at home in the food processor very common with that too so once i've got them all sifted here we got to do it again this is why i like to sift onto parchment paper because just got our little handles here to pour it back into the sifter so we're going to sift this a second time if for any reason after that second sift you see any signs of clumping still you're gonna want to sift it a third time but usually i find that two times does the trick all right once your dry ingredients are ready it's time to focus on our meringue so we can talk about all the details of meringue but we do a great job of that in our meringue episode of bake it up a notch so the first thing that we want to do is add our egg whites i don't use any cream of tartar in this recipe but you could especially if it's a humid environment and you're you struggle with meringue a little bit of cream of tartar will definitely help we're going to start by whipping this on kind of a medium low speed until the mixture looks foamy then we'll start gradually adding our sugar [Applause] [Music] this is what it should look like when it gets to that foamy stage you should see a little bit of white foam at the top but it shouldn't be light and fluffy yet it just almost looks bubbly now that we've got it to that foamy stage we'll start gradually adding the sugar until it's all incorporated then we'll keep whipping on high speed until the mixture is fluffy white light and beautiful [Music] i think we're there we're trying to whip to stiff peaks yeah we're there but before i totally finish we're going to add our vanilla to it and if you were using color to make your macarons more colorful if you were trying to use that to denote the flavor anything like that you'd want to add that food coloring at this time too [Music] okay once that vanilla is incorporated and we're at stiff peaks we are ready to start mixing our batter so again just a reminder that's what we're looking for for stiff peaks it should stand straight up be nice and fluffy and white it shouldn't be clumpy it should be nice and smooth all right let's re-situate ourselves here a little bit so you can mix your macarons right in the electric mixer bowl but electric mixers are kind of tall and so it can be difficult to ensure that you've gotten all the way down into the base i like to transfer it to a nice big mixing bowl that i can use once we get our meringue in here we're going to add about half of our sifted dry ingredients to it now with this first addition we can focus on really kind of just mixing it to combine whenever you're trying to add something to a meringue that's really light and aerated and fluffy where anything that you're adding to it is going to be very dense by comparison even though it's not the technical use of the word tempering we can almost think of this like we're tempering the batter by adding a portion of the dry ingredients to help get the consistency to a more even consistency where it'll make it easier to add the remaining without ruining our volume so you can be a little bit more aggressive in this first stage of mixing i'm using my parchment paper handles again to just add about half of it into the bowl and i'm gonna go ahead and mix it like i said a little bit more vigorously really just focusing on getting those two ingredients combined that's gonna help the meringue get to a an easier texture for us to fold in the remaining so typically when you're mixing something with meringue you don't want to lose too much of the meringue's volume but when you're working with macarons we actually are intentionally trying to lose some of the volume because we want to achieve that lava-like consistency or that macrinage once that first addition is incorporated we'll add the remaining dry ingredients in two to three more additions kind of however you can get it added as efficiently as possible while still maintaining our ideal texture if you want you can even sift your dry ingredients into the bowl to add another little bit of that aeration that lightness that's up to you and from this point out we are folding to fold the batter you're just going to kind of work in a circular motion you're scraping around the outside edge and bringing it over onto itself and that's kind of why it's referred to as folding because you're scraping and bringing it over folding is kind of favored in a lot of baking techniques because it allows you to mix things together to combine without destroying much volume so with something like a macaron we really need that structure from the meringue to give it its little feet the thing that we love about macarons the texture that you're looking for the consistency it actually is a little bit softer than i think some people think it is because it has to be soft enough that when you pipe it it it should continue to flow a little bit when you give it a little bit of a wrap one of the steps of making macarons is after you pipe them you give them a nice tap when you do that tap whatever the shape is they should expand a little bit more because it's fairly fluid and that's that lava consistency that we're talking about however if you mix too much then you're not going to have the structure that's going to give them their little feet so it is a delicate balance and this is the hardest part we're going to keep folding kind of until the mixture if you should be able to draw this figure eight that's the kind of guidance that people use so you use the batter to draw a figure eight and it should stay and hold without breaking from your spatula and mine still does not quite do that so we need to give it a little bit more fold and i think that that's the part that actually is a bit of a misconception because i think people are sometimes so worried about over mixing it that they actually don't quite mix it enough and that can be just as problematic for a macaron okay let's try this again once we've got our batter at this consistency we are ready to pipe and shape our macarons for that reason it is important that you have kind of your piping equipment all ready to go before you even start the recipe because we want to be able to go right into piping i'm going to grab a piping bag fitted with a tip and my baking sheets with my little stencil and we'll start piping so before we can pipe we've got to get our batter into our pastry bag you can do this two ways we've showed it before where you can kind of drape the pastry bag over a cup which allows you to do it without i don't know i find this way very awkward which is why i'm showing it to you in this regard i think the easiest way is to put your hand in this c-shape cup the pastry bag in that c-shape and then just scrape right into the bag and we never want to fill our pastry bag much more than halfway full because it's just hard on our hand we'll re-come and refill as we need now just like when we made pat a shoe together in past episode bake it up a notch i put a tiny bit of the macaron batter in the edges and corners it just helps to keep the parchment paper really firmly to your flat baking sheet and it's just going to help in this process a little bit so when we pipe we're going to be holding it straight up and down we're going to start squeezing and applying pressure and we are going to pipe just until we reach the outside of our little stencil a reminder actually that i made these stencils using a marker and a little cookie cutter but then i turned the parchment paper over so the ink is touching the baking sheet not touching our food that is very important so i'm going to hold it straight up and down apply steady pressure when it gets to the edge of my guide i stop applying pressure and a little flick of the wrist don't worry if you've got a little bit of a there's just no better word for it nipple is usually what i call them let me think of a better word in case they don't want to use nibble little nubbin this little nub in at the top which is exactly the same as nipple but if you get a little nub in at the edge like that don't worry about that at all because when we give our baking sheet a little bit of a wrap a tap it's going to even out the other thing that's important to remember about macarons is that they can be piped fairly close together because they don't really spread in an outward direction they just rise upward creating their little feet [Music] once we get our macrons piped we're going to go ahead and get them a nice firm tap on our countertop and this does a few things it's going to allow them to spread a little bit more which removes any little bumps on the surface especially and it's also going to just help even out the overall shape from the piping the other thing that it does is it pops any tiny air bubbles and what i mean by that you can actually see some on the surface here that popped and those can actually form bubbles on the inside of your macaron and create kind of a pocket of air or even a hollow center so we're also bursting some of those small bubbles allowing for a flatter more uniform macaron one thing that to be aware of when you're making your stencils i said it's okay to pipe these fairly close together however you do want to be aware that when you do that tap they're going to expand a little bit and i have one spot on my baking sheet where my macarons have touched and this is okay it's not the end of the world but it isn't ideal because there is going to be a little bit of a mark there's going to be a notice a difference in the foot there so you want to avoid that space them just far apart enough that you can fit as many on the baking sheet as possible without risk of any of them touching like that after giving your pan a nice firm tapping on your countertop now you can continue to pop any bubbles or remove any imperfections using the tip of a skewer or paring knife and what you want to do is you can just find anywhere where maybe there's a bubble you can use the tip of the paring knife to pop it any of the bubbles that popped you can kind of fill in to smooth out the surface so that there's not a pock and this is just going to help us ensure the smoothest appearance in the final macarons at this stage we need to let the macarons rest to form a bit of a skin on the surface i typically do this for anywhere between 30 minutes to two hours it can kind of depend based on the environment that you're in in a really dry environment in the winter it might only take 30 minutes for that skin to form if it's a little bit warmer it might take a little more than an hour and on up so what you want to do is you just want to touch the surface and it shouldn't leave any kind of mark it should actually be very easy to touch and it won't be sticky anymore whereas right now it's nice and fresh very sticky this would also be the time before you let them let your macarons dry now would be the time to apply any decorations like sprinkles or any kind of finishes that you would want to apply so that they would adhere so some of those might be a sprinkling of cinnamon or a sprinkling of fruit powder obviously non-perel's any kind of topping of that nature so we'll set these aside in a nice dry place not covered just exposed to the open air to form that skin and then we'll be ready to bake them most folks when they think of french macarons or macarons in general typically think of this kind of two to three bite small cookie that comes kind of in a box looking like glittery jewels they're gorgeous but actually macarons can be made in a variety of sizes and even in a variety of different shapes all you need to do to make it in a larger size is make yourself a larger stencil and be careful when you're piping it's important when you're piping macarons that the batter isn't too mounded you instead want kind of a nice flat even layer as much as possible but remember that tapping of the baking sheet can help you get there too i also like to make what i call bakery style macarons when i went to pastry school we sold macarons in the bakery that were much larger about three to four inches and i really like that size as well it's really impressive and really fun minis are really fun to make little tiny bite-sized ones even to just use as decoration not even to make sandwich cookies and one of my other favorites is to make them as cake layers because macarons are naturally gluten free it's actually really easy to make them as a cake so you can make multiple layers anywhere between six to nine inches actually bake up really really beautifully or you can even make a giant macaron sandwich cookie for slicing they're all a lot of fun and they're gonna be piped the exact same way hold your pastry bag in the center of your stencil and just allow the batter to flow outward it's okay to kind of nudge it a tiny bit [Music] and we'll give it a nice tap of our baking sheet which flattens out our layers now we can pipe another one gentle so macarons can be made really in any size you want and in any application you want treat them like a cookie treat them more like cake layers there is so much fun to be had once you've learned to master the macaron once your macarons have had their rest they are ready to bake and you actually don't want to let them rest for too long once that skin is formed it's time to go to the oven if they rest too long and the skin continues to dry the cookie it can actually cause the meringues i'm sorry the meringues the macarons to crack and have other issues in the oven so really important let them get that skin and then get them in the oven macarons typically bake at a low temperature around 300 degrees fahrenheit that is a really important number because a little bit too hot can be really problematic and a little bit too cold can be really problematic make sure you use an oven thermometer to make sure your temperature is accurate so you don't have any macaron disaster try not to open the oven too much and check on your macarons while they're baking every time you open the oven door you're letting out a lot of heat and that can be really essential for keeping that even rise and getting the perfect foot and a smooth top once they're nice and glossy on the surface and the structure is set you can actually press the center of the macaron to see kind of how steady it is another thing i sometimes do is wiggle it a little bit usually if it looks fairly sturdy when you try to wiggle it and it's still attached to the feet it's ready to go if it feels soft when you try to wiggle it it might need a little more time in the oven you're gonna let them cool completely on the baking sheet before you peel them away from your parchment paper or silicone baking sheet and then they're ready to do whatever you want with so let's get some of these in the oven in front of me i have some of the larger bakery style macarons these have been cooling on the baking sheet and one of the things that you can do is just really gently let me see if there's any better yet this one still is just really gently pull to release it from the parchment paper and it should be really really easy if you feel any resistance it might be stuck to the paper so you can run a small offset spatula underneath before you start but it should just be something that you can kind of just pick it right up and and they are easy to do these bakery style macarons have beautiful feet so i just wanted to take a moment to talk about what the foot on a macaron is and what you're kind of going for the foot is where the macaron the meringue has given it some lift the aeration in the meringue and it has allowed the cookie to rise up the foot should not extend outward it should be kind of in line with the cookie going straight up if it extends outward that's usually a problem related to mixing again it would still be a delicious cookie nothing wrong with it but that straighter look is what you're looking for and it's not necessarily super tall it's just a little bit of that oomph and then you sandwich the two feet ends of the cookie together so that's what you're looking for for the perfect foot but remember if for some reason your feet on your macarons are less than perfect it doesn't make your macaron any less delicious classic macarons are typically done as sandwich cookies with two macarons and a little bit of filling in the center the filling is usually some kind of frosting like buttercream and can be any kind of buttercream you want can also be things like ganache you can also use softer fillings things like curds jams and jellies but when you want to do that you kind of have a slightly different method that we're going to use so let's start with the simplest way to fill a macaron which is just with a single filling i've got vanilla bean macarons in front of me and i've got a vanilla bean buttercream here in my bag and piping the filling is actually very similar in process to piping the macarons themselves we'll hold the pastry bag directly oop that's not good we'll do that again we'll hold the pastry bag straight up and down until we get just about to the edge you can see on my baking sheet here i have some already turned upside down and this is something i like to do i pair them up because even with your little stencil sometimes you're going to have slight variances in size maybe even in shape and you know every macaron is a beautiful macaron it doesn't have to be absolutely totally perfect to still be really really delicious so i like to pair them up just to help me get that slightly more professional look and then we're just gonna gently place the top on and press down until that frosting comes to the edge these are actually quite full sometimes people do a little less filling than that so in my next batch i'll do a little bit less it you know it's one of the advantages of doing it yourself if you like a lot of frosting you can put a lot of frosting in them if you like a little bit less that's okay too now also important to remember be gentle as you're pressing the top shell down if you press too firmly you can actually apply enough pressure to crack your macaron and we don't want that we did too much work in getting these perfect or as perfect as close to perfect as they can be [Music] all right so that's how you fill very simply a macaron sandwich cookie with just one type of frosting but oftentimes what makes macarons extra special is that we give them two fillings so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna pipe a ring of buttercream around the outside and then i'm gonna give them a core of this softer filling which is mango curd now something that is sort of tricky with this is that a curd something soft like this it is possible to just put that in the center of a macaron but it needs to be a firmer curd or it's going to kind of fall out the sides when you bite into it so what i like to do is kind of build this frosting retaining wall this is the same kind of concept that we use in layer cakes as well to kind of give you if you want to use multiple fillings to give you that little bit of sturdiness so now that we've got our ring of filling around the outside edge we can pipe our softer filling into the center of the macaron and it's going to be this like awesome little surprise we bite into it there's gonna be two different fillings two different colors two different textures it's gonna be great so this time i actually also used a star tip to so that i have a little bit of texture in that filling you just want to make sure when you do that that you're extra careful and gentle when you press so that we don't ruin some of that texture and that effect that we created and remember once the cookie is chilled that frosting will be firm but right now it's very soft so we just want to be careful as we assemble one other thing you can do when you're filling your macaron is actually kind of decorate the edge i talked about using a specific piping tip to leave kind of a pattern at the edge but you can also kind of roll your finished cookie so that the edges gets coated in something like sprinkles crushed candy or i'm gonna do some coconut so i have dulce de leche that i'm gonna fill these macaron with so i'll push the dulce de leche so it just extends the edge of the cookie and that's important when you want to do this technique you want to make sure that it comes out the outside edge a little bit and these macaron were actually sort of inspired by shortbread cookies alfajores and i love those so we're gonna make these look almost like a macaron version [Music] oh my gosh look at that is it just me or is that sexy problem is they aren't allowed to say anything so i don't know if it is just me [Music] this is another way to add a little bit of texture and a little bit of contrast to the appearance of your macaron and it's easy to do as well as a lot of fun [Music] after baking your macaron shells can be held at room temperature until you're ready to assemble and they can actually hold that way for a day or two if it's a dry cool environment any longer and you're going to want to freeze your macaron shells and they actually are very freezer friendly what you need to do is you just want to freeze them on the baking sheet until they're firm then gently transfer them in single layers to some kind of airtight freezer storage container some kind of tub something and you can separate layers of them with parchment paper they can stay frozen that way and then you can actually use the frozen cookies to assemble your macaron sandwiches once macarons are sandwiched they should be stored in the refrigerator and actually some refrigerator time i view it as mandatory in the refrigerator the macaron is going to absorb some of the moisture from the filling and become softer and chewier so it's absolutely okay to eat your macaron as soon as you've assembled them but really they should be refrigerated in my opinion for at least eight hours and up to overnight they're gonna stay in the refrigerator for several days so you can kind of use that as your snack spot and make them it's one of my favorite things about macarons is they are a little bit of effort but they're very make-ahead friendly so you can have really fancy desserts but do them over the weekend when you've got time to do it and not be running around trying to throw them together at the last minute there are so many fun things to do with macarons sandwich cookies are just the starting point right now i'm gonna toast some marshmallows i laid some milk chocolate on some bakery style macarons i sprinkled with graham cracker crumbs and we're gonna make ourselves a gluten-free macaron s'more [Music] talked a little bit earlier about how you can make larger macarons to make a sliceable dessert instead of a handheld one right now i'm going to make kind of my funfettist version confetti cake version of a macaron cake with kind of a creamy frosting let's do [Music] it macaron shells actually work great in frozen desserts because they stay kind of soft and chewy even when frozen so they make a great base that's naturally gluten free for ice cream sandwiches i love to just put a huge scoop of ice cream in between two macarons make sure the ice cream is nice and soft so that you can press the ice cream sandwich down without cracking your macaron i hold in my hands a giant nine inch macaron that we are going to make into a giant macaron sandwich cookie that we can slice and serve like a cake for this i'm going to do a striped effect where i'm going to pipe concentric circles of two different fillings and when we cut into it it's going to look like the filling is striped [Applause] [Music] filling my larger bakery style macarons is really the same as making a typical regular small little macaron sandwich but there's also one other option you can also stick a kind of treat stick or popsicle stick in your filling when you're assembling to make sort of a macaron pop they're really cute really fun and a stick will stay stuck in after you refrigerate your filling this is a really fun take on classic macaron sandwiches but it's like a little bit more of a plated dessert flair this is a lot of fun to make for a special occasion a dessert whatever and again the macaron absorbs moisture from the frosting as it sits in the fridge so this actually becomes a very like your spoon just falls right through the layers of these macaron towers i'm making like a neapolitan one so i've got two different icings and chocolate macarons let's get stacking [Music] so i think when we think of macarons we think of them as sandwich cookies but they're really a delicious cookie all on their own and one of the things that i really wanted to do in this episode is kind of encourage you to think of the cookie itself and and really enjoy that as this base foundation for a lot of possibilities because macarons do taste really delicious with icing i still like to use some icing when i'm eating them as a single cookie and it opens up this whole world of decor possibilities you can do different piping techniques using buttercream and like a thicker style frosting or you can decorate them almost like sugar cookies using royal icing flooding techniques or what i'm going to do today which is a simple piping technique sometimes referred to as brush embroidery so what i have here are just single macarons i'm not going to sandwich them and i'm going to decorate the top and what's really great about this is again this is a naturally gluten-free cookie it's chewy it's got a lot of cool texture so this is a really nice alternative to serve as a decorated cookie instead of a classic sugar cookie the possibilities are really really endless for brush embroidery what we're going to do is we're going to pipe dots then we're going to take a slightly damp paint brush any kind of regular craft paint brush just preferably one that's you know clean and pastries only and we're going to draw that brush through the piped icing to make an effect that really looks a lot like embroidery but it's very very simple what's great about a technique like this is you can also use it to potentially cover up any errors that you have so i just cracked this macaron that i'm decorating and i'm just gonna make a flower right around it and then no one will ever know except all of you [Applause] then we can just pipe a little little round in the center [Music] and just sprinkle some non-purels right into the center and if you want to be really precise you can even use [Music] a little tiny paintbrush or some tweezers to kind of push the non purels towards the center to keep them looking like the middle of the flower see you get me started doing this though and we could be here for days aaron likes to decorate stuff and apparently talk in the third person [Applause] [Music] another really fun way to decorate these is just with buttercream frosting and i like to take a bunch of different tips some rounds some star and just pipe different sizes different shapes and kind of a wreath shape around the outside edge of the cookie you can use lots of different colors it's really easy everyone from grown up to kid and everything in between can do this [Music] another thing i see all the time is people using macarons to decorate other pastries for that you can use just a plain macaron cookie or you can use an assembled sandwich cookie it's a really fun way even if you've got some in your freezer you can bring out just one or two to add a special garnishing element to a cake a pastry any kind of display so i'm gonna decorate this little one [Music] this can actually also be a really fun way to kind of finish using some of your messed up macarons because you can break them into little crumbles but then they're going to soften almost into a sprinkle like topping on your cake [Music] that hurts mistakes and it's okay okay i'm still a delicious macaron etc this is one of the most um a lot of mistakes can happen with macarons and i want to like take a second before we even talk about the different mistakes and what they look like and how to prevent them to just say that it's okay to mess up some of your macarons some of the reasons that they get messed up are really beyond your control you could have mixed the batter properly and piped it properly but maybe one side of your oven is a little hotter than the other so some of them cracked or had some kind of problem so just a reminder that when you have those mistakes it's still a delicious edible cookie and i have some ideas of things that you can do with mistake macarons that are really really fun so toss your mistake macarons into some kind of freezer container until you've got enough of them that you can do something else really fun with and in the meantime let's talk about these mistakes one of the first mistakes and actually one of the mistakes that we experienced the most in our macaron baking in the last few days because we were making such a high quantity is cracked macarons so a cracked macaron is going to try to rise but is instead going to like burst at some point it might burst in the center it might burst on the side a cracked macaron most likely means that the meringue is under whipped so in that case it doesn't have quite enough strength to rise effectively and instead what happens is before the structure can set it just kind of rips apart another sign is that it could mean that the oven is too hot so this is something that i find will happen sometimes like i said just on the corners or the edges of your baking sheet where maybe you've got a little hot spot in your oven and the rest of your tray might be fine another reason cracking can occur has to do with the rest if you don't allow your macarons to rest enough or if they rest for so long they become very dried out both of these actually can lead to cracking and this is one of the issues that i struggle with the most with making macarons is a lot of the problems that can occur it can be over baking or under baking it can be over mixed or under mixed like can cause the same problems so this is why macarons get this reputation of needing to be very very very precise but again remember that in this particular case remember to look for a stiff meringue in the early stages make sure that your oven is the right temperature check it with an oven thermometer and allow it a good amount of rest but not too much another error that can happen when you're making macarons is sort of a bumpy or uneven surface i find that this is one that irritates people the most because their macaron might look perfect in every other way except it's got a little spot or a little hole in my mind that's still a beautiful macaron but let's talk about it for the sake of addressing it for those folks who really don't like it so in front of me here i have three different macarons that have slight imperfections on the surface these two have kind of a bubble and this happened because i didn't pop the air bubble effectively as we showed with the tip of a paring knife there were air bubbles in there i didn't release them enough it can also happen if you don't tap the tape tray aggressively enough to allow some of those bubbles to burst on their own so the bubble gets trapped inside and as a result it's going to make a big hole in the center of your macaron it could either be a small air hole that just kind of looks like a little mistake or it could make your whole macaron almost hollow so you want to keep an eye out for those pop them when you see them pipe carefully and you know just give that tray a good good bang on your countertop to make sure that you're getting a nice even surface the other thing that can happen is if the ingredients are not sifted well enough we want to make sure that we take them through the double sift and maybe even a third if it's necessary to get those ingredients really light really aerated so that we can get the smoothest look possible the third mistake with macarons is one of the most infuriating it's when you get a hollow macaron shell now this can happen to kind of varying degrees it can happen just as we described in the last one that maybe there's just a little bit of air trapped in so you have an air pocket in the center or it can happen from improperly mixed batter or your oven temperature being way off and what will happen is you can see it here on this mini one there's a hole in the top it's cracked and i can see it's completely hollow in the center here's another one where i can actually see inside of it and see that it's hollow in the center because it kind of opened up like a box no feet on this one which also shows improper mixing there's a variety of things with that hollow um structure that really can be frustrating and unfortunately there are many potential culprits so one of the things that i advise is at any point in this process when you're making macarons if at any point you feel like maybe something isn't right take a moment take a little notebook in your kitchen and write that down the next time you make macarons you can see was that the problem oh actually no it might have been that i used too much food coloring that weighed down the batter it might have been that i so unfortunately there are lots of elements like that and like i said some of them are out of your control humidity in the air your oven temp being the way that it is hollow macarons can also happen when they are under baked because sometimes what will happen is it will start the process of rising but before the structure is fully set you might take them out of the oven and it just leaves this big pocket of air in the center before they could fully settle and and get set and baked so all of these things are things to consider proper baking temperature proper mixing and of course the proper amount of bake time to ensure that you don't end up with a hollow macaron when i first started making macarons i kept making the same mistake over and over again and i could not figure out what it was that was causing this when i would go to take my macarons off the baking sheet i would try to lift it up to peel it away and the top of the macaron would come off leaving the bottom still on the baking sheet of course this is a cooled macaron that i this happened when i was prepping um so it would normally kind of stay stuck to the baking sheet the base and that's a fairly common problem it can mean under baking which means that there's still a little bit of moisture in the base and that's why it's not come off and it can also happen when you're trying to bake macaron in a really humid environment you might have baked them just ripe as they cool the humidity and the moisture is starting to seep into the macaron and as a result it's getting sticky almost immediately to prevent this from happening try to store your macarons in a cool dry place so that that humidity and that moisture doesn't get to it and make sure that you're baking them long enough you can always do the little doneness test the little shake from side to side or the press with your finger to determine if they're just right when you mess up your macarons do not fear this is still a tasty almond cookie that you have spent a lot of time making and you can do a lot of delicious things with it first of all just because your macarons don't have feet doesn't mean you can't make sandwiches you can still use some of those imperfect ones to make your macarons but if you don't want to freeze any imperfect shells and use them to make a variety of other desserts especially desserts that you might want to make gluten-free one thing i like to use them for is in place of meringue cookies in an eaten mess an eaten mess is usually crushed meringue cookies whipped cream and jam delicious with crumbled macarons and my friend aaron a different aaron who also bakes the amazing erin clarkson of cloudy kitchen she has a really cool recipe that i love where she folds crumbled macarons into an ice cream after it's done churning it absorbs a little bit of the moisture and becomes chewy and soft inside the ice cream it is amazing so delicious there are lots of ways that you can find in your kitchen to use even the less than perfect macarons [Music] one of my favorite ways to use scrap macarons is to build a trifle with it because you have all these rainbow colors of macarons what i do is every time i have a couple that crack i throw them into a container in my freezer that way i can use them once i've got a good amount in some kind of cool recipe like this so we're just going to layer alternating layers of crumbled macarons whipped cream and whatever jam curd whatever you feel like [Music] so [Music] hello thank you so much for joining me for this episode of bake it up a notch where we talked all things macaron i am so excited because i really think that this cookie is such a versatile cookie even beyond the classic sandwich cookie it is so famous for so i really hope that you have a great time remember some of these not some of these recipes all of these recipes i did that last month too all of the recipes are available not just some remember all of these recipes are available on food52.com and we've linked them in the video description below if you make anything and you're inspired to make macarons please let me know tag me tag food 52 and use hashtag bake it up a notch so we can see your creations let me know in the comments what you'd like to see in future episodes and don't forget to like and subscribe so you can be aware when every episode comes out thanks so much for joining me and as always happy baking [Music] we made too many macaroons no mega roms [Music]

Channel: Food52

Views: 194,157

Rating: 4.9576311 out of 5

Keywords: Food52, food, cooking, recipe, foodie, cook, home cooking videos, erin jeanne mcdowell, bake it up a notch, erin mcdowell macarons, how to make macarons, macarons for beginners, baking techniques, piping techniques baking, what to do with messed up macarons, s'mores, macarons, gluten-free baking, gluten-free cookies, brush embroidery, meringue cakes, macarons layer cake, trifle recipe, how to make a trifle, macaronage, macaron technique, ice cream sandwich, ice cream sandwich recipe

Id: lP3_KTuIlrU

Length: 51min 4sec (3064 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021