French Macarons

Two truths and a lie:

1. These tasted amazinggg

2. I’ve never had a macaron before

3. Making these was so stressful that I’m never going to make a macaron again

Which is the lie 🧐 Also which flavor sounds the best?

Ingredients

For the cookies

• 1 and 3/4 cup powdered sugar

• 1 cup almond flour, as fine as possible

• 1 tsp salt (divided)

• 3 egg whites (room temp)

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar

• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

• 2 drops food coloring (gel is better, but we used liquid)

4 buttercreams variations

• 2 sticks of unsalted butter

• 3 cups powdered sugar

• 3 tbsp heavy cream

• 1/3 cup pistachios

• 1/2 lemon (zest and juice)

• 1/3 cup blueberries

• 1 tsp instant coffee

Process

For the cookies

1. Add powdered sugar, almond flour, and salt into a food processor and blend until smooth

2. Sift the mixture 1-2 times (its gotta be very fine, no chunks)

3. In a separate bowl, add egg whites and 1/2 of the salt

4. Slowly add the sugar while you whip the eggs

5. Whip those egg whites until you get stiff peaks (you should be able to flip the bowl without anything coming out)

6. Add the vanilla extract and 1/3 of the flour mixture into the whipped egg whites

7. Slowly fold the flour mixture into the egg whites

8. Continue to slowly add more flour mixture

9. Fold 50-60 times (you should be able to make figure 8s with the batter as it runs off your spoon)

10. We decided to make 4 flavors, so we then divided the cookie batter into 4 and added food coloring to each of the bowls

11. Pipe the batter onto a silicon baking mat (parchment paper will do)

12. It really helped us to place a macaron template to attempt to have them be the same size

13. For best results, I recommend piping straight up and down (angled piping results in lopsided cookies, I would know because I made several lopsided cookies lol)

14. Tap the baking tray to help the air bubbles rise

15. Let sit for 30 mins - 1 hour

16. Bake at 300 for 20 minutes

17. Let cool completely before adding buttercream

For the buttercream

1. Add butter to a bowl and whip until fluffy

2. Add the powdered sugar, and heavy cream

3. Mix well

4. Divide into 4 or choose your favorite flavor (but then if you want just one flavor, x4 the ingredients recommended)

5. Pistacho = use a food processor to make a paste

6. Blueberries = use a food processor to blend

7. Coffee = add instant cofee and just enough hot water for it to dissolve

8. Lemon = zest and then juice the lemon

9. Add 1/4 the butter mixture to the 4 bowls and mix well

10. Pipe the various buttercreams onto a cookie and voila!

* macarons are tough and ours did not turn out the prettiest. If you are an expert baker please message us and let us know how to improve :) thanks