Here’s a tidbit about me, I love to bake. While I can’t stand its sibling, cooking, not because it comes out bad, but because I find it tedious and often time forget about something and burn it. Well, I guess that means it can come out bad, once and a while at least. In any case, cooking is very annoying to me, while baking is fun!
I believe it’s because baking requires precision, exact measurements, temperatures, processes that you must follow to get it right. All written down or passed down to you because by following along, you’ll get a great tasting if not perfect outcome. Sure I’ve had fumbles where I’ve tried something and had to change one thing or another, or the end result is not what I was looking for, but I’ll most likely want to try again. That can’t be said for cooking, as when something goes wrong, I want to throw everything out and light the garbage on fire. But alas I can’t.
Even in my earliest years of life, I remember watching a lot of baking shows in awe of what was created. So it’s no wonder with the accessibility to Pinterest I spend a lot of time thumbing through looking at mouth-watering desserts made by food bloggers. In one of those scroll sessions, I stumbled amongst French Macarons and wondered “why haven’t I ever made these?” I love buying them whenever I see them in a shop in NYC or in a Jersey mall, and I’ve seen them made on plenty of baking shows. This alone has educated me at least a little bit on how these are to be made. Although I’m one that likes to be prepared in all things, so I also watched a YouTube video to answer a few technical questions.
So, following this recipe and with my flavor chosen ( Cookie Butter thanks to it already being in my pantry), I set out to buy my ingredients and to making this French dessert classic.
Even though I know a bit about making macaroons it was not easy! I had to make the batter twice because the first time around, just when I was getting to the final steps before baking, I made the mistake of folding my dry ingredients into my egg white mixture and over mixing the batter, so the egg whites deflated. At that point there is nothing you can do, trust me I tried putting in Cream of Tartar, a rising agent for desserts, but it didn’t save it. So with the deflated batter put in the refrigerator, which made a great loaf cake later, I took a deep breath and a much-needed break and started the process all over again.
General How-To
- Separate the egg whites, weigh them on a food scale
- Separate all dry ingredients and weigh them
- Create a meringue, with egg whites and sugar
- Sift and mix together all dry ingredients
- Fold egg whites GENTLY into dry ingredients as to not deflate the egg whites
- Pipe the batter into the baking sheet with a plastic bag or piping set (don’t make the mistake of forgetting to tap all the air bubbles out of the mixture by dropping the baking pans gently on the counter. And don’t open the oven door after you put the macaroons in to do so, something I also did. Even though I know better!)
- Bake them for 22-25 mins with your oven at 280 degrees. If the temperature is hotter or colder your macaron shells might crack or not come out correct. For an exact temperature make sure you have an oven thermometer so you can know exactly when you can put them in, as the degree you put your oven on manually might not be the exact temperature inside the oven. Shop the Like to Know It I made of the tools needed to make macaroons. I may receive a commission when you buy from my Like To Know It.
Like To Know It:
Baking Needs-
Macaroon Ingredients and more Baking tools-
Mixers-
Outcome
In the end, the shells of my macaroons were a bit larger than they should have been, they didn’t have “feet”, but the texture was good although not perfect. This I believe was due to opening the oven door. To my relief, they were soft on the inside and crunchy on the outside as they should be. The filling was not as it was supposed to be, although it tasted good. The texture was not as smooth, but that was my fault as I went off the recipe and added more cookie butter.
I intend to try making macaroons again, and with that in mind, I went and got another piping set, to pipe out the batter. As well as cookie mats to help keep the size of the macaroons the same. Baking is a science and sometimes it takes more than once to get it right. With that in mind, I suggest you find an easy recipe like the one I used and keep trying.
Have you ever made macaroons? Use the recipe I linked and take the advice written in this blog post for help! Let me know how it goes in the comments and on social media. Please feel free to share this post and subscribe for more! It helps me so much and I really appreciate it!-T.S.
P.S. If you do follow the recipe I linked, here are the conversions from U.K. grams to U.S Tablespoons and Cups.
65 grams = 1/2 Cup
200 grams = 1 Cup
25 grams = 2 tablespoons
45 grams = 3 tablespoons
What do you think?