Macarons for the win!

So I haven't posted in about 5 days, well thats because my birthday was this weekend so yeah I didn't feel like baking. The great thing about birthdays are the money. Hahahaha I mean I could have bought a ton of things for myself, but instead I bought new ramekins, mini ceramic loaf pans, tons of sprinkles, luster dust, spatulas, new baking pans, sheets, cookie cutters, you get it. I just bought things to help me bake more delicious treats. I think I'm going to try to bake things and upload them with themes. For example, next month for April I will bake only breads or things that you need yeast in them, like doughnuts, loaves of crusty bread, maybe some different quick breads. That's going to be the plan. To finish out the month of March, I'm just going to finish baking things that I really want to bake. With that being said I wanted to try to make a small batch of macarons, so I tried a new recipe and I think they turned out great, and I also wanted to bake them to use some leftover buttercream that I had in the fridge. I ended up making chocolate macarons with a strawberry buttercream filling and berry macarons with a blackberry buttercream. Oh last week I made my version of galaxy macarons with blackberry buttercream so I'll explain those and have pictures below. Look how yummy they look.

Here are the Galaxy Macarons

Galaxy Macarons

Here are the Chocolate Strawberry Macarons

Here are the Berry Macarons

A row of sweet berry macarons

For the Berry Macarons my oven was a bit hot, so the little ruffled feet spread out a little more than I would have liked. I'm not in love with the way the looked, but the texture and taste were amazing. I ended up turning the oven down five degrees and the other cookies turned out more visually pleasing to me.

This new recipe I used makes 12 macaron shells (6 sandwiched cookies)

Macaron shells (small batch)

• 30g of almond meal
• 55g of powdered sugar
• 20g of granulated sugar
• 30g of egg whites (room temp)

This is the recipe if you want more cookies (makes about 24 sandwiched cookies)

Macaron  Shells (large batch)

• 125g of almond meal
• 200 g of powdered sugar
• 50 g of granulated sugar
• 100g of egg whites (room temp)

Additional Materials

• Gel food coloring
• baking sheet 
• parchment paper
• rubber /silicon spatula
• fine sieve
• piping bag/ziplock bag
• round tip
• whisk/hand-mixer/stand-mixer

I like to have everything weighed out and already in bowls to start because I find it easier and faster when it's time to make these.

Take your powdered sugar and almond meal and run it through a sieve.

It should look like this

Now set your flour mixture aside.

Take your egg whites and pour them in a clean dry bowl and begin beating them on low for 2 minutes. The egg whites will become white and foamy. Now turn your mixture up to medium for 2 minutes, your egg whites will begin to look like sour cream. Gradually add in your granulated sugar . Now your egg whites will look a bit like shaving cream and will have formed soft peaks. Now is a good time to add in your food coloring.

Since I'm making berry macarons, I added in 2 drops neon pink and one drop red. I then beat on high for 2 minutes until stiff peaks form.

Now stop beating the egg whites and add in your flour mixture

Gently begin folding this mixture over itself while going around the bowl at the same time. You will stop when the batter can ribbon off of the spatula. Remember you do not want to over mix or undermix this batter. Literally stop when it can ribbon off your spatula like a hot lava. Also preheat your oven to 300F. My oven runs hot so I like to cook these at 295F. 

Take your batter and place it in a piping bag with a round tip attached and pipe 1.5 inch circles on a parchment lined baking sheet. Try not to pipe so close together because batter will spread when you bang the tray. I then sprinkled gold luster on top

I like adding a little gold dust

After you pipe the cookies on the tray bang it against the countertop to get air bubbles out. Now you need to leave these out for about 20-30 mins, depending on how humid it is. To test to see if these are ready to go in the oven, just lightly touch your macarons and see if they are dry to the touch (no batter sticks to your finger)

Bake at 300F for 18 minutes

For the galaxy macarons I just made the batter as normal just omitting the food coloring. I added food coloring after the dry and egg whites were already incorporated together. I then separated some of the batter into separate bowls and colored some black, navy blue, light blue,and forest green. I then placed a few spoons of each color and swirled it in a piping bag. And just pipe them on the tray. While these were drying out on the counter I added silver luster dust and mini white round sprinkles to the top

Resting galaxy macarons

For the chocolate shells just add 3-4 tablespoons of cocoa powder to your dry ingredients and sift them all together in your sieve.

Follow the instructions above, I also add brown food coloring to my egg whites

Fold in the mixture of cocoa powder, powdered sugar and almond meal

Pipe them just like the others, I added little sprinkles to the top

Chocolate Macaron Shells

Bake all of these one tray at a time 300F for 18 minutes. I like to let them cool on the tray for about 1-2 minutes, then take them off of the tray, still on the parchment paper. 

Now it's time to fill them

Use whatever you like, jam, nutella, buttercreams, ganaches. I used buttercream that I had made previous.

Simple buttercream recipe

• 8oz of softened butter (2 sticks)
• 11/2 cup powdered sugar (adjust to your taste) (start small you can always add more)
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• flavor mix in ( whatever you want) (jam, cocoa, extracts, citrus zests) ( start with a few tablespoons)
• gel food coloring (make it whatever color you'd like)

Just blend all of the above ingredients with a mixer until smooth

Add your buttercream to a piping bag and pipe onto one cookie and sandwich with another cookie. Voila you are done. 

These taste better if you pop them in the fridge for 24-48 hours and then let them come up to room temperature before eating. (It soaks up the flavors of your filling in the shell). They taste so yummy, crunchy outside, chewy inside with a creamy filling

My nail was dyed, but these macarons were so good

chocolate-strawberry deliciousness