Perfect and Easy French Macarons Recipe

Welcome!

French macarons are still impressive for many pastry enthusiasts, but they are not very complicated to make if you do follow step by step the right recipe! Let yourself be guided through this Instructable and you will be delighted to taste them!

Step 1: Prepare Your Ingredients

To make about 40 macarons you will need:

For shells:

- 200 g of icing sugar

- 200 g of almond powder

- 75 g egg white (twice)

- 75 g of water

- 200 g of sugar

For raspberry filling:

- 350 gr of fresh or frozen raspberries

- 200 g of sugar for jams

- 15 g of lemon juice

Weighing are very important for this recipe, please, use a scale for a perfect result.

You also need a cooking thermometer !

Step 2: Mix the Powders!

In the bowl of a food processor, mix the powdered sugar, almond powder, and process (be careful not to heat the mixture), until you get a very fine powder. Sift the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into a large bowl.

After that, you can add the first weighing of white (75gr) in the bowl and add the color if you want. Mix the whole with a maryse (the French way to say spatula?) until you get a firm but homogeneous paste.

Step 3: The Italian Meringue!

Making an Italian meringue can seem complicated, but the secret is to respect the cooking temperature and not pour your syrup too quickly into the bowl!

In a pan, not too big, put the water, then the sugar.
In the bowl of your robot, or with a hand robot, you're going to start gently mounting the whites (again 75gr).

Put your saucepan on the heat, and quickly heat your syrup up to 118 ° celsius.
When your syrup is about 110 ° you can start whipping your whites at full speed. When your syrup is at 118 ° celsius, pour it very gently along the side of your bowl. And keep whisking until the meringue is lukewarm! You should get a nice, creamy and shiny meringue that will form a nice bird's beak at the end of your whisk.

Step 4: Mix All Together!

Gently mix the meringue with the first preparation.
You must mix until you get a slightly shiny dough, which smoothes itself in the bowl. Be careful not to make it too liquid!

It is very important that the dough stays fairly firm, so go slowly and check your mixture several times.

Step 5: It's Piping Time

Here i'm using a piping bag with a socket of 8mm, you can use a bigger one if you want, but it's perfect for the french style macarons. I'm also using a silicon mat on a perforated tray, but a classic baking sheet will do the job perfectly. You need to pipe small discs of dough about 3cm in diameter and 5mm in height.

Once you have piped all your macarons, you should let them "crust" for about 30 min, their surface should no longer be too sticky when you touch it with your finger.

Preheat your oven to 145° celsius.

Step 6: Bake Them, Sort Them

Once your macarons have rested for 30 minutes, you can put them in the oven for 12 to 20 minutes, keep an eye on them, they are ready when you can peel them off the silicone mat or baking paper without tearing too much the underside (It's okay if a little piece of macaron sticks to the baking mat.)

Let them cool, once they peel off the paper without much effort, you will be able to sort them to put them two by two so that they are the same size.

Step 7: Time to Move on to the Garnish

For the garnish we will make a raspberry jam.

Pour the raspberries and the jam sugar into the pan, bring everything to a boil. If you used whole raspberries, you must mix in order not to have any more pieces (Here I used a fruit puree which I had made, was in the freezer)
When the mixture is hot, you can pour the lemon juice and mix well. You have to cook it like a jam, to check the texture, you can use two techniques.

For the first, you will place a plate in your freezer, when the jam is cooked, if you pour a drop on the very cold plate, the drop should freeze very quickly and not run. If it leaks, you should continue cooking.

The other method (Professional way) is to use a refractometer (very useful if you make a lot of jams) and cook your filling up to 65 ° Brix.

Refractometer are not too expensives and very easy to use, it can be a very cool gift for a jam addict!

When your jam is perfectly cooked, place it in the fridge and let it cool down.

Step 8: Filling the Shells

If you are still here it looks like everything went well, I am really proud of you!

Your jam has slightly hardened in the refrigerator, you will have to mix it again to make it supple and smooth (use a hand blender or a food processor) once mixed, all you have to do is garnish your macarons with a pastry bag! Make small jam balls then close the shells on top of each other and you should get perfect little macarons!

Step 9: You Have Perfectly Accomplished Your Mission

I am very happy to have taken you here.

You can now put your macarons in a box, so that they are perfect, they must be left to stand for 48 hours in the refrigerator, so that the shells absorb a little moisture from the filling.

This is the secret of the softness of the macarons. Avoid storing them in the refrigerator for more than a week.
On the other hand, you can perfectly freeze them to keep them longer.

Hope to see you soon for another recipe,

Edwin.