(French Music)
- Bonjour!
Today we are going to make
French Macaroons.
It's very difficult, but you can do it,
with Smart Cookie.
(Laughs)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Smart Cookie.
I'm your host Elise
and we are about to embark on
an adventure together, everyone.
I know it looks very pleasant up here,
it's all a facade because today
we are tackling
the French Macaroon.
That's right they're so scary
and so beautiful we are going to be in this together, okay.
Me and you internet, me and you.
So, first things first.
Why do I have a food processor?
Because, even though I have purchased
fine ground almond flour,
it might not be fine enough.
So, we are going to put our powdered sugar,
some almond flour and some salt in a food processor
and pulse it a couple of times just to make sure
that it is as fine as it possibly can be.
Girl, you fine.
Gorge.
Off to a good start everyone.
I put things in a bowl.
Delightful noise.
We got a fine mesh sifter
and a large bowl.
Okay, and we are just, now we are going to sift this.
So, yes, this is a lot of steps for one recipe
but I'm telling you I tried to short cut this.
It does not work.
So, we want this to be fine as possible
because it's going to help us with some rise
on our macaroons and make sure that we get feet on them,
which are kind of the crinkly edges on the macaroon.
And that is the sign of a well made delicacy.
Oh, Smart Cookie fact of the day.
So, while the French claim the macaroon,
they were actually brought to France by Catherine De Medici
who married the King of France during the Renaissance.
And apparently these were originally made,
starting back in the 8th century by monks in a monastery
and that's where the recipe originally came from.
But those were not made as sandwich cookies,
the way that we think of macaroons now.
They were like, just the, just the cookie part.
But they originally came from Italy.
So, take that French people.
And now everyone that is French is mad at me.
Sounds great.
We got our almond flour mix of this,
now it's time to work on the meringue.
This is where things start to get
a bit little more tricky.
So, stick with me. We're going to be fine.
Three egg whites.
These must be at room temperature.
You can not do with cold egg whites.
So, if you have forgotten to take your eggs out
hot take, put them in a bowl of warm water
for about 10 minutes and that will bring them
up to room temp, super quick.
Alright, so, got my egg whites.
I got my cream of tartar,
which is going to offer us a little stability.
And the rest of our salt.
I'm just going to start right here.
(mixer noises)
That sounds crazy.
So, I'm going to talk with this off so that we can all hear.
What I've been waiting for is this to get a little bit foamy
and now that this has gotten foamy
I'm going to start to slowly add my super fine sugar.
I'm using castor sugar, but if you are not able
to get castor sugar, which you usually can find
at a hobby store or a baking store,
you can also find quick disolve sugar
at normal grocery stores.
So, you can use that as well.
But you want to get something as fine as possible.
You'll notice a trend.
We want everything to be as fine as possible.
You're gonna wanna keep your speed
at medium for this recipe.
Don't go anywhere past number six on your Kitchen Aid
or it's going to be too hot.
Too speedy, okay?
Slow it down.
(mixer noises)
Wah la!
I'm gonna add some vanilla in now too.
(mixer noises)
And now we wait!
This is going to take somewhere around 4 minutes or so.
I am actually going to kick this down a notch
because it's going really fast.
It is okay for you to stop your mixer during this process.
It would be better for you to check this
too frequently, then to not check it and over beat
your egg whites.
You need a very specific texture
when you're making this recipe.
So, we're not there yet and you can kind of tell.
The peak in the bowl should hold it's shape
and since this just like, immediately fell
we know that we are not quite there yet.
This just sounds like it is going to fall apart,
at any moment, right?
Like it's going to explode.
Ooh, okay, we might have it.
So, here's the other check.
You can also do a finger check.
So, I'm just gonna dunk my finger in there.
You see how it's holding it's peak but
it's bent over a little bit?
That's what your looking for.
You want this, you don't want it to stick straight up
cause then you know you have over beaten your eggs.
And I got close to over beating them.
If you over beat your eggs there's going to be
too much air, that's going to cause you to have.
Your shells are gonna crack.
Your feet aren't gonna rise.
It's gonna cause havoc on your plans for the day.
And I don't want you to have a bad day.
I want you to have a good day, so just be kind to them.
Be patient and gentle.
Now comes the tricky part.
All of this has been like fine,
now is when things get tricky.
It's folding in this almond flour into our egg whites.
We're actually trying to take some of the air out
of these egg whites but if you take too much out
you are gonna end up with flat puddles of batter
and nothing will happen to them.
So, there's a very fine line between
under-stirred and over-stirred.
And even I am not sure if I know what it is.
So, we're in it together.
Okay, in it to win it.
I'm going to do this in thirds.
We're looking at probably somewhere around 30 strokes of
folding in.
So, all I'm doing for folding, I'm just turning the bowl.
Eleven.
Twelve.
Okay, it's okay if it's not totally folded in.
We're going to be fine.
Alright I am going to go ahead
and add my food coloring now because I don't want
to over beat my batter because I'm trying to get this in.
So, I'm using a deep pink.
You can use whatever color delights you that day, okay?
Any old color you want.
I'm going to add some more in.
We are at 23, we might need a few extras.
It's going to be fine.
There are some other qualities that we are looking for.
Not just the number of times we stir.
Okay.
That's the last of it.
Alright, that was 30 but we are going to keep going.
The other thing we are looking for that's a good test
is if you can have this fall of your spatuala in thick
ribbons and make a figure eight
without the batter
falling off or breaking,
you know that you've got good texture.
So, let's see where we're at.
Oh getting close. See, we're real close.
But we're not quite there yet.
Uh, huh.
Yeah, see. There we go.
Okay, don't touch it anymore. You've done it, okay.
I think we've got the perfect texture.
We will find out when it bakes.
That's the scary thing about this recipe.
There's no way to know until we get ready to bake these.
I have got a large circular pastry tip,
specifically a number 804.
What's up, Wilton Baking?
This is a silpat.
This is a silpat. This is a baking silicone sheet.
This is specifically made for macaroons
and it's got stencils.
Oh I shouldn't point with my middle finger.
(beatbox music)
It's got stencils on there so that you can follow along.
It's like coloring inside the lines, how fun.
We've already tested what the texture of this is.
We know that it's pretty liquidy
so your gonna have to move pretty fast.
I'm only gonna fill up my pastry bag
with about half of this.
Each bag should make about 30 macaroons.
So, about half of the batter should fill one sheet tray
and then you can fill the rest of it and do another
sheet tray.
Here we go.
So, you are just starting right in the middle
you're gonna pipe and lift.
Pipe and lift.
If you have not beaten this enough
those little peaks will stay.
So, your hope is that within 20 seconds
those little peaks fall.
A note about using a piping bag.
You'll notice you really only need one hand to do this
and all the pressure is coming from the spot
between my thumb and my pointer finger.
So, I'm squeezing at the top of the batter.
And I'm also just kind of letting gravity do it's thing
so, I'm barely putting any pressure on this.
Great!
Quickly, before these set, you get to do a really fun part
of this, which is to slam this baking sheet
on the counter.
We're going to try and pop as many air bubbles
as we possibly can.
Because if you don't get enough air out all of your
tops will crack and we know we want these
to be perfectly smooth on top.
So, here we go.
Yeah, so satisfying.
I'm going to pipe the remaining batter on another
sheet tray and these are going to sit out
for a half hour to an hour to let the tops dry out.
Before we bake them, they should be dry to the touch.
And we want these to dry out because that's how
we get that little foot,
that little crinkle edge around the bottom.
So, these are gonna go sit for a little bit.
I'm gonna pipe some more
and then we'll pop them in the oven.
It's been about 45 minutes since we piped our macaroon.
I know that was like, super quick for you
but I ate Pad Thai in between that time,
so I'm feeling great.
So, I'm going to check on these guys over here.
These guys have just been hanging out.
♪ Hanging out.♪
Alright.
What we are looking for before these guys go in the oven
and the reason we let them dry out a little bit is that
this helps us create the feet on the macaroon.
So, you can see these are now dry to the touch.
Nothing happens.
They're still a little jelly like but they have
definitely dried out.
These are going to bake at a low tempature at
300 degrees.
If you are unsure of your oven temperature, I would
highly recommend putting an oven thermometer in there.
Because we definitely needs these to bake at 300
or even lower.
Anything above that, they're going to start to
turn brown and lose some of their color.
So, these are going to go in for, and this is
really specific, 17 to 20 minutes.
And you're gonna wanna keep an eye on them.
And if you've got a smaller oven,
you'll wanna switch your trays halfway through baking.
Here we go.
This is the real, the real test.
Cause you don't know how well you've done until
after these have baked.
Alright so, we'll switch these guys halfway through.
And we'll just see what happens.
♪ Do do doo ♪
So, our macaroons baked for about,
this was somewhere between 17 and 19 minutes.
You can tell the difference.
Some of these are a little bit lighter then others.
Some of them are a little darker.
It's okay, everybody's the same.
Alright, so, these worked.
And I'm so pleased.
They have a little foot.
Look at this little guy.
See his little foot right there on the crinkle edge.
Beautiful!
Alright.
We've let these completely cool for a half hour.
Before we even took them off the mat,
so we let them cool on their mats.
And now it's time to decorate.
Now you can switch your fillings with anything
that you want.
So, you can do jams, you can do ganache,
you can do a good ol' American butter cream.
Um, you can do cream cheese.
Whatever you want.
So, this is again like a moment for your creativity.
So, you go for it.
Now before we get started, I'm going to do some decorating.
On mine.
So, I'm going to use Luster Dust,
which is like an edible glitter.
And it comes in these little containers.
And it's very expensive.
And then the way that you adhere Luster Dust
is with some
vodka!
And you need just a little bit.
So, were just gonna tippy-ed tap.
There we go.
So, you wouldn't want to use water on this
because it would take too long to dry.
The alcohol in this, means that this dries really
quickly and it's not going to dissolve
the sugar in the cookie.
You can see how metallic that is.
Pretty cool stuff.
I am going to just do some splatter plate.
Because I think that, that is fun.
You can decorate these however you'd like.
If you wanted to do sprinkles you could do that.
Alright, I think those look pretty good.
That's pretty cool.
Now all we're going to do is fill these.
So, I just go some good ol'American butter cream.
I'm using some strawberry extract today,
but again, you can use whatever you want.
We're just gonna pipe right into the center.
Boop!
♪ Da da daa ♪
There it is!
Look how cute. So, precious.
Adobz.
Great, so now we are just gonna fill the rest of these
and then I'm gonna let people try them.
Whoo!
Y'all, we made it through.
Look at those.
Those are beautiful.
I'm gonna try one. So, let's see. Which one do I want?
Hmmmm.
Uh huh.
It taste like crispy on the outside and super chewy.
So, you got like all kinds of textures going on.
You got a little crunchy, got a little chewy,
got super sweet, got some strawberry going on.
The salt in here is really nice.
It helps to balance everything out.
They're just really nice.
That's a really nice dessert.
I think that it's call for celebration,
if I do say so myself.
(Pop!)
Whooo!
Ahhh!
Hey, if you make these at home, please let me know
how it goes.
Make sure you like, share, subscribe, comment,
all those things.
Let's have some champagne together, you know
what I'm talking about.
Hey, and don't beat yourself up if these don't work
the first time.
They didn't work the first time for me either.
But if you try these
then cheers to you my friend.
We'll see you on the next Smart Cookie.
Okay, do we have another episode cause
I'm just gonna drink the champagne.