Easter Egg MacaronsPatti - April 01, 2018

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Macarons are notoriously tricky. But I like a challenge, especially when the result is so pretty! I first attempted to make macarons several months ago, and after five tries, I think I have it down. Except when I believe a different recipe that says I can skip a step.

There are lots of tutorials and recipes online, and I honestly cannot remember which website I got my recipe from. Here is the recipe I use along with my (hopefully understandable) instructions.

Ingredients:

• 3 egg whites
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup sugar*
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 cup almond flour (ground almonds)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 275 °F (140 °C).
2. Beat egg whites and salt together.
3. Slowly add the sugar.
4. When the mixture reaches soft peak stage, add the vanilla and any coloring you wish to add.
5. Whip until mixture reaches stiff peaks.
6. Sift the powdered sugar and flour together and pour over the egg whites. Gently fold it in (about 45 turns) until the batter smooths out again after 10 seconds.**
7. Pipe desired size and shape onto baking paper and tap the tray to remove air bubbles.
8. Let rest 20-30 minutes, or until the tops or no longer sticky to the touch.
9. Bake 18-22 minutes.
10. Fill with desired filling (buttercream, ganache, jelly, etc.) and sandwich together.
11. Store in refrigerator 1-2 days before eating.

*I actually completely forgot this ingredient this time, and instead added my powdered sugar and almond flour separately. Somehow it still worked, but following the recipe will probably work better.

**Using a spatula, lift some batter out and let it fall back into the bowl. When it takes about ten seconds for the batter to fade back into the rest, your mixture is ready.

My Explanation:

Since I wanted Easter egg macarons, I started by tracing egg shapes onto the back of my baking paper. I got my template here: indulgewithmimi.com 

Preaheat your oven. I like to do all the prep work first, so next I sifted the powdered sugar and the almond flour. I did it separately, but if you are following the recipe, just sift them together.

Here in Switzerland you can buy almond flour with or without the shell. If you use almonds with the shell, you will end up seeing the brown specks in your macaron. I like to pulse the ground almonds in the food processor for a few seconds to get them even finer. When sifting, only use what actually goes through the sifter - leave the big chunks out.

Next, I beat my eggs and salt...

...and slowly added in the sugar until the mixture became shiny and formed soft peaks when the beaters pulled away.

At this point, I divided my egg whites into four different bowls and added color. I ran out of green and yellow, so mine are extra pale pastel! Whip again until stiff peaks form.

Dump in your almond flour/powdered sugar mixture. I used the white flour for the yellow, green, and pink macarons, and the speckled flour in the blue to make robin's eggs. Fold in the flour until the batter returns to rest after 10 seconds (described above).

Pipe onto baking paper - macarons are normally 1 1/2 inch circles. My eggs turned out a little less egg-shaped than I wanted, but I probably mixed the batter a bit too much.

Let rest for 20-30 minutes or until the tops are dry. This is what happens if you skip this step:

Bake for 18-20 minutes. If everything works, they should be nice and flat.

I filled mine with vanilla buttercream (I used this recipe: Perfect Piping Buttercream Recipe), then stuck them in the fridge until I had time to decorate.

My husband gave me this nifty little decorating pod. It worked fairly well, but the tips ended up being a little too large for this project. I used royal icing (How to Make Royal Icing without Meringue Powder).

I had an audience chanting "cookie? cookie?" while I decorated ^_^

I love how they turned out! Due to my failure to let all of the cookies dry out, only twelve or so were decoratable, but that meant less work for me!

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