The Most Fool-Proof Macarons You'll Ever Make

macarons are one of the most popular but also most challenging desserts to get right we spent many months and made dozens of batches in the pursuit of trying to find a recipe and some foolproof techniques to help you do it right the first time a perfect macaron should be chewy on the inside and crispy on the outside it should have those classic feet and a smooth top first things first you want to let the egg whites come to room temperature for at least 30 minutes before you get started having the egg whites rest is going to result in a much fluffier airier meringue so pro tip a really easy way to separate your whites from your yolks is to actually use your hands you can alternate between eggshells but you risk puncturing the egg yolk you could get some shell in it it's actually a little more time consuming if you wash your hands this is a really easy way to go now we can move on to our dry ingredients so you want your dry ingredients to be really really fine to ensure that smooth top this is the time to break out your food processor if you have one so we're going to add our dry ingredients to a food processor we'd recommend pulsing it at least 10 times but you really can't go too far here the finer the dry ingredients the smoother your top is going to be even if you buy extra fine almond flour it's not going to be that smooth you might get a bit of a lumpy surface if you don't have a food processor fear not your macarons can still be delicious they might just be a little lumpier on top another tip to get that really smooth surface is to sift your dry ingredients a few times after you've pulsed it in the food processor this is just going to ensure a really smooth top so you can get those picture perfect macarons now we're going to move on to our wet ingredients start off by beating the egg whites with a pinch of salt that's just going to help stabilize them you also want to use the whisk attachment to help beat some extra air into your meringue so you're going to beat the egg whites just until they get really frothy and are no longer translucent just like this that's when you want to start adding the sugar really gradually if you add too much sugar at once it's going to deflate all that beautiful air that you just whipped into the meringue once all the sugar is added keep beating until you get stiff peaks if your peaks are falling over like this you still need to keep going once they're really stiff like this you're all set so if your peaks are stiff enough you can actually flip a bowl upside down without anything falling out once your meringue is good to go you're going to add the vanilla extract you don't want to do this too early or you're not going to get those really big beautiful stiff peaks and lastly we're going to add our food coloring we'd recommend using a gel food coloring because it gives you a much more vibrant color using a liquid food coloring is going to thin your batter out and it's going to fade during baking it's really subtle but you can see here how the one with liquid food coloring actually looks more peachy than pink now we're ready to combine the wet and dry ingredients so first add a third of the dry ingredients to the meringue now we're going to macronut that's the technique of folding the dry ingredients into the meringue traditionally you gently fold ingredients together 35 to 40 times but we found that you actually want to be really aggressive to beat out any remaining air bubbles that'll help you get a really consistent cookie so there's not an exact number of times that you need to fold the batter it's really just something you want to keep an eye on ultimately at the end of the day the texture should look like wet sand ribbons some people describe it as lava but how many of us have really seen lava a tried and true test is to do the figure eight method one of the biggest mistakes people make is either under-mixing or over-mixing their batter once it's all incorporated go really slowly and keep practicing that figure eight until you've got it that'll really ensure that you don't go too far once you can make a figure eight with the batter without it breaking you're good to go stop here and do not keep mixing now that the batter is ready we're ready to start piping our macarons fill the piping bag with the round tip put four dots of the batter in each corner of your baking sheet then place the parchment paper on top this is going to help secure the parchment paper so it's not going to slide all around as you're piping a lot of recipes call for silicone mats but after numerous tests we found that they can actually make the cookies a little moist parchment paper will really dry your macarons out which is what you want this was one of my personal biggest revelations during testing the classic size of a macron is about an inch and a half wide you can buy a template for piping but you can also just eyeball it like we did once the macarons are piped it's time to drop the tray make sure you do not skip this step dropping the tray is going to help eliminate any air bubbles it also is going to ensure that you get a really smooth surface on top let the macarons rest at room temperature for 30 minutes to an hour the macarons are going to get this kind of weird film on top and you can actually brush your finger back and forth after an hour and see that it's not going to indent that's the sign that they're ready to go if you don't do this step the macros aren't going to rise properly and you won't get those classic feet in our case when we tested it the feet grew outward instead of upward now you want to bake the macarons at 300 degrees for 17 minutes if you have an oven thermometer this is a really good time to use it make sure your oven's not running too hot or too cold or the macarons aren't going to come out right as without baking don't open the oven door if you do you could deflate the macarons if your macarons are sticking to the parchment paper after this it just means they're a little under baked you can just pop them back in the oven for a minute or two when you take the macarons out of the oven let them cool in the baking sheet for 15 to 30 minutes when they're done they should lift right off the parchment just like this transfer the macarons to a wire rack to fully dry out and cool before filling if you don't all your filling is just going to melt all over them so while our macarons dry out we're going to work on our filling we're gonna go with a really classic vanilla buttercream and we'll talk about ways that you can get a little fancy with your fillings a bit later on so first you're gonna cream your room temperature butter once it's really beautiful and fluffy just like this you're gonna sift your powdered sugar into the bowl you don't have to sift it but this will just result in a really smooth creamy buttercream once everything's combined add the vanilla then you can add one or two tablespoons of heavy cream and mix until it's incorporated we needed to add a little more cream and you can just do this a tablespoon at a time until it's the right consistency now that the buttercream is done add it to a piping bag again fitted with a round tip filling the cookies is pretty straightforward just pipe a dollop onto the cookie that's a little smaller than the size of the actual cookie then press two sides together and you're good now the part that takes the most patience out of this entire process is that we'd actually recommend that you wait at least 24 hours before eating your macarons this will help them develop the best flavor and texture you may be tempted to eat one right away and you know if you do we won't tell but really it's worth your while to let them rest once you feel like you've mastered the basic macaron feel free to get creative when you're starting out the easiest way to customize your macarons is by playing around with food coloring and the flavor of your filling you could flavor your buttercream you can make a chocolate ganache or a lemon curd the possibilities are truly endless and those are the basics of how to get started making macarons they can be pretty intimidating and honestly really easy to mess up if you don't know what you're doing but if you follow our tried and true tips you'll be able to master the techniques needed to nail perfect macarons every time from here you really just need to try it how many did you make i think i made probably over 2 000 macarons oh my god you know they take a lot of time they take patience if you make a macaron right you've won [Music] life

Channel: Tasty

Views: 20,139,131

Rating: 4.9567146 out of 5

Keywords: BuzzFeed, Tasty, Tasty 101, almond meringue, baked good, best macarons, biscuits, buttercream, buzzfeed, buzzfeed tasty, cookies, cooking, delicious, dessert, food, how to make macarons, macaron tutorial, macarons, perfect macarons, tasty, tasty 101, tasty macarons

Id: MjVgIXccYXA

Length: 7min 42sec (462 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 22 2018