Vanilla Macarons

Vanilla Macarons!

This was my first time making them, and if you've heard they're tricky, it's true. But they're definitely doable.

For that reason, I've tried my best to make this recipe as straight-forward and explanatory as possible!

Here's the recipe i used:

• 1¾ cups whole or sliced almonds
• 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 7 egg whites
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Food colouring (if you'd like)

Note: you can choose to reduce the amount of powdered sugar from the given recipe, but none less than 2 cups, as it does keep the almond flour drier.

Grind the almonds through the food processor with a couple tablespoons of powdered sugar to keep it dry. You can choose to do this in portions if your food processor is small, like mine. Add in the remainder of the powdered sugar. If you don't have a good processor, you can run it through the blender, as long as you can really get it grounded down. Grind up the almonds until fine enough to run through a sift like flour. Sift the almond flour into a mixing bowl.

Separate your eggs so you have a bowl of egg whites. Since we will be beating the egg whites like a meringue, my tips are:

• Don't get any yolks into your egg whites while separating! The fat of the yolks can very well mess up your meringue.
• If you get shells in while separating, do not fish them out with your fingers! Same goes, the oil from your fingers can mess up the meringue. Instead, take a spoon (or chopsticks) and attempt to get the shell pieces out.

Separately, set up a double boiler. Fill the bottom pot with water, not reaching the bowl placed on top, and  boil the water. Place a bowl (make sure it's safe to do this with) or another pot on top of the first pot. Heat your egg whites until lukewarm in the bowl (around room temperature). Picture below:

The reason we warm up the egg whites to room temperature is because when beating, they can gain about 5 times the volume compared to beating cold egg whites, if not more.

Once you've warmed up the egg whites, move it over to a mixer (or use the same bowl for mixing). Use the whisk attachment for your mixer. Beat the egg whites until foamy.

Once the egg whites are foamed up, proceed to add the sugar. Don't add the sugar in beforehand. Beat the egg whites and sugar on medium-high speed until stiff peaks. This can take anywhere from 5 - 10 minutes depending on your mixer.

More tips for beating egg whites:

• Don't take a break while beating your egg whites! 
• The mixture will start runny, turning increasingly thicker
• Once it turns into a thick cream consistency, but doesn't hold onto your whisk, it's about halfway

This would be an example of stiff peaks: 

If you're still not sure whether your egg whites beat correctly, you can test it by placing a small amount onto a sheet, giving it a couple minutes, and seeing if the egg whites spread out. If they spread out, they're too runny and need to be beaten more. If the egg whites have a creamy consistency, but hold their peaks, they're perfect! A sign that it's been over-beaten is if the egg whites turn almost into clumps, and no longer look creamy.

It's important to test the egg whites because we don't want the macarons to spread out and fall apart if the egg whites don't hold.

If you choose to use food colouring, add one drop (or two, depending on the saturation of the food colouring) to your egg whites now. Fold it in carefully until the colour spreads out evenly.

Next, fold in your almond flour in small portions. In case you've never folded, simply take a spatula (not your whisk), gently slice through the centre of your mixture, then make a sweep around the side of the bowls, thus, folding in your mixture. You want to fold it in and not whisk it in because you want to keep all the air in the beaten egg whites locked in. 

This is the best picture I could find to slightly explain that:

Do this repeatedly until all the almond flour has been mixed in. You can add in your vanilla extract now, folding it in as well. 

Line cookie trays with either silicon sheets or parchment paper. I used parchment paper for convenience sake, but I've heard it makes the edges much cleaner for macarons. Either way, both are great to use.

Put the mixture into a pastry bag with any large round tip. To put mixture into a pastry bag, roll down the sides of the pastry bag until halfway down the bag, and put the mixture in. I have a cover type of thing to put in front of my pastry tip that came with the pack so that the mixture doesn't just pour out the other end. If you've got one, stick that in front. If you haven't, put the mixture in quickly and over the bowl to avoid a mess.

Once you can fit all the mixture you can into the pastry bag, squeeze out the excess air, roll in the top, or put an elastic band on it. Use pressure at the top of the pastry bag while controlling the piping near the bottom.

Note that in this picture, the pastry tip is MUCH too small for macarons. You want to go for about a #9 tip to a #12 tip.

Pipe your macarons into small circles about 1 - 1.5 inches wide. Any larger and they don't look nearly as cute. Things to be careful about:

• Pipe the circles equally on all sides as they may not rise on the heavier side.
• Don't layer on top if you notice the circle doesn't look quite right. Because of the egg whites, macarons tend to keep their shapes even when baked, and it doesn't show up nicely. 
• Try to match sizes up with each other well since you will be sandwiching them together

Once they're all piped out, put them in your oven for 16-18 minutes at 275 to 300 degrees F. I used 290 in my standard oven for 16 minutes. Make sure to check on your macarons when they hit 16 minutes. You want a soft macaron crispy, not a crunchy, hard to chew one! 

Finished macarons are tough on the top, almost hollow sounding when tapped lightly. (I used a chopstick, it went very well.)

Let them cool, and remember that they can break very easily, so be sure to let them rest. 

For the centre, you can use anything from buttercream, jam, nutella, ganache, etc.

Here is a great and simple recipe for Chocolate Buttercream

For mine, I used jam and nutella:

Do you see what i mean about the lopsided macaron shells and using the right pastry tip?

Note that no matter what you do, some macaron shells will go wrong. Your success rate will vary with each batch.

These were my failed macarons, and even then I'm pretty proud:

Have a ton of fun making them, and keep in mind all the small tips and pointers. Done right, they're delicious and extremely rewarding.

Greatest of luck! Enjoy.

- Janeator Bakin'