Hey there welcome back to another video and if you're new here, hi I'm Bettie
I am the baking instructor here on this channel and over on BakerBettie.com
today we are continuing on with our meringue series and I'm going to show
you how to make French macarons now these cookies are notorious for being
really finicky and difficult to perfect so if you don't get them perfect on the
very first try don't get discouraged it's probably going to take you a few
tries to get them right and there are a lot of different opinions and different
methods for making these cookies but this is the method that I like best now
there are two main methods for making macarons and that is the French meringue
method and the Italian meringue method we are going to use the French meringue
method because I think that's the best place to start for beginners it's a
little less intimidating than the Italian meringue method so to start we
are going to pulse our powdered sugar and our almond flour in a food processor
now the reason why I recommend doing this is not all almond flour is created
equal some is a little more coarse than others and we want to make sure that
there's no large clumps of almonds in our macaron mixture now as always the
full written recipe is linked down in the description box so I have my
powdered sugar in my food processor and I'm adding my almond flour and I just
want to process this about ten times just ten pulses to get that all broken
up and make sure that the almond flour is really nice and fine okay and once
you have your mixture pulsed we are going to go ahead and put it through a
sifter just to make sure there aren't any other clumps and if there's anything
left in the top of your sifter after you sift it you don't want to pour that into
your mixing bowl any of those clumps you just want to toss out now the sifting
part is also going to aerate the mixture and just ensure that we have really
smooth batter and that we don't deflate our egg whites too much
when we mix it in I'm just gonna sift this over a medium mixing bowl and we're
gonna keep this separate from our egg whites until those are whipped okay
there's just a few little bits of almond flour left in my sifter so I'm just
gonna leave those in there I'm not going to add those into my mixture but I know
I'm going to add a little bit of salt into my mixture and just stir that up to
combine and then we're gonna move on to working with our egg whites okay so next
we are going to move on to making the French meringue so I have a couple eggs
here and I'm going to separate the yolks from the whites and you always want your
whites to be at room temperature when you are making meringue and that's going
to help them whip up to their fullest potential and you want to be really
careful not to get yolks in your whites okay so I have just my egg whites in my
mixing bowl and I'm going to mix these on medium speed until they are really
frothy and starting to hold soft peaks before I start adding any of my sugar
okay so my egg whites are really really frothy they're starting to hold some
really soft peaks and now I'm going to start adding my granulated sugar about a
half tablespoon at a time and I'm going to mix that in for a few seconds before
I add more sugar and you really don't want to rush this process because your
egg whites won't be as stable if you add too much sugar too quickly so just go
slowly and continue whisking on medium speed
so once all the sugar is added you want to keep whipping the mixture and
checking it occasionally to see how stiff the peaks are getting we're going
to want to whip this till they are fully stiff peaks but before they get all the
way whipped we're going to stop and add our vanilla extract and then that's also
where you would add some food coloring so I'm going to keep whipping but I'm
going to keep checking them and I'll add that right before we get to the end of
whipping okay so to check the peaks you're just going to take the whisk from
your mixer and kind of stir it around in there and then pull up on it and if it's
flopping over a lot like it is here then you want to keep whisking you want those
to stand really nice and tall okay so they are very close you might be able to
tell that it's just leaning over just slightly there and so now I am going to
go ahead and add a little bit of vanilla I'm actually using vanilla bean paste
here but you can use vanilla extract and then I'm going to add a little bit of
gel food coloring now you don't really want to use a liquid food coloring in
your macarons because you can kind of ruin the texture so I'm just using some
gel teal gel food coloring and I like to just get a couple of toothpicks and kind
of stick those in there and then streak that through the egg whites now this is
going to lighten in color quite a bit once you add your flour or your almond
flour and powdered sugar mixture so you do want to try and go a little deeper on
the color then you want the final color to be okay and now I'm just going to mix
that in and then continue whipping until we get fully stiff peaks
okay so the egg whites are holding stiff peaks now so that means we are ready to
go with our egg whites so I'm gonna grab my almond flour and sugar mixture and
we're gonna combine the two okay so this is the part that's probably the
trickiest part of making macarons and this is actually called the macronage
stage it has its own word because it's actually a very finicky process but you
want to fold your almond flour and sugar into the egg whites just enough but not
too much we do need to knock a little bit of this air out but we don't want to
knock too much air out of it so what you want to do is we're gonna start with
about a third of the dry mixture and you're going to stir this in completely
now for this first edition you don't need to be too careful about knocking
air out but you also don't want to be too aggressive with it we're not trying
to stir every bit of air out but once that is stirred in now we're gonna add
the second third so we're going to add this in three additions now for this
addition we are going to go ahead and fold it being pretty gentle with it
and taking our time we're going to make sure all of those dry ingredients are
folded in before we add the rest now the proper technique for folding is you're
going to cut down through the mixture with your spatula down to the bottom of
the bowl and then you bring what's from the bottom up to the top and you scrape
around the bowl and turn the bowl 90 degrees so this takes a bit of practice
and just take your time and be gentle
okay so now I'm going to add the final third of the mixture and fold that in
again being very gentle and trying not to knock too much air out of it so
you're going to cut down through the middle of the mixture down to the bottom
of the bowl and bring what's on the bottom up to the top
and then you want to make sure you're really scraping around the edges of the
bowl too so the texture that we are looking for is we want the mixture to
slowly flow off of the spatula back into the bowl so right now it's kind of
plopping off of the spatula which means we need to be keep folding a little more
we need to continue mixing so if you under mix your batter you're not going
to get the right texture but if you over mix your batter you're also not going to
get the right texture this is the thing that you really have to practice and
when it does start flowing slowly off your spatula you want it to be where it
takes a few seconds to dissolve back into the batter so I'm going to show you
here what the right texture is it's kind of hard to explain in words you just
have to see it you have to get a feel for it so right now it's flowing slowly
off my spatula and it's kind of holding shape as it flows back into the batter
before it dissolves completely in okay so I have a pastry bag here fit with a
round tip and I'm just going to go ahead and fill all of my batter in here so
that we can pipe our macarons and once it's all in the piping bag go ahead and
gently press it all the way down to the bottom so that you don't have any air
bubbles okay so now I have a sheet pan fit with some
parchment paper and I also went ahead and printed out two of these little
macaron templates I'm not great at piping and keeping everything the exact
same size so this helps me try to keep my macarons the same size so the piping
part is a little bit tricky I'm still trying to perfect it but what you want
to do is you do have to work kind of quickly and you're going to hold the
piping bag straight up and down over your parchment paper give even pressure
and then release it before you pull up on the bag
and one of the things you kind of want to do is give a little bit of a flick as
you pull up to try and avoid having a really big peak on your macaron that's
something I'm still learning how to perfect but just keep practicing it ok
so once you get your macarons piped one of the most important steps is tapping
them on the counter to get any air bubbles out so you're going to tap it
about five times okay so now before these go in the oven we do need to let
them sit we want them to form kind of a skin on the top of them and that's what
helps them rise and get the iconic macaron feet as they call them so we're
gonna let these sit for about 30 to 45 minutes and I'll show you how it should
look basically you want a film on top that you can run your finger over and
it's not going to get batter on your finger so I'll come back and show you
once they're ready to go in the oven okay so it's been about 40 minutes for
my macarons and these are ready to go and the way that you know they're ready
to go in the oven is you can take a finger and just rub it right over the
top gently and if it's not tacky at all it's dry then you can go ahead and bake
your macarons now we're going to bake these at a pretty low temperature about
285 degrees Fahrenheit and that's gonna let them pop up and get those nice feet
on the bottom I bake mine for about 17 minutes but the way you're gonna check
to see if your macarons are done is you're going to gently touch the top of
the macaron and if it kind of comes away from the bottom then you do need to let
it go a little bit longer now you want to avoid opening the oven though for the
first part of baking you only want to check during those last few minutes of
baking so I would suggest setting a timer for about 15 minutes and then you
can check it and let it go for a little bit longer if you like alright we're
gonna go ahead and bake these okay so it's been about 15 minutes and I'm just
going to gently nudge these and actually I can see that they are completely
attached to the feet so I'm gonna go ahead and call these done and I'm gonna
pull them out of the oven now our macaron shells have completely cooled I
just let them cool right on the sheet trays because if you do try to lift them
off the parchment paper too quickly they can kind of stick to the parchment so
just let them cool completely on the sheet trays and if these shelves turned
out really nice they are smooth on top they do have those iconic feet which is
what you're always looking for on a macaron now a macaron professional might
say that these aren't quite perfect they do have a few little air bubbles in the
feet and that can happen from not tapping them hard enough when you go to
tap the trace or not enough times so next time it's I might tap it one or two
more times or just be a little more firm when I do the tapping but overall they
look really really nice now you can fill these with whatever you like probably
the most classic thing to fill them with is buttercream and I just have a really
simple vanilla American buttercream here I'll leave some links down below to my
different frosting recipes for you to try with these macarons but you could
also use ganache you could use lemon curd you could use Jam there's all kinds
of things you can use now before you fill them you kind of
want to go through and sort of match up the pairs they're all just slightly
different sizes so I like to find the ones that are the most similar in size
and flip over one that is going to have the filling on it and just kind of match
them up so that they fit together really nicely and then when you fill them if
you do want to add a feeling like a jam or something like that you can actually
just pipe a little border around the shell and then you could add some curd
or Jam right in the center but I'm just going to go ahead and fill it up with
the buttercream and then you just want to set the shell on top and very gently
squeeze it so that it goes right out to the edges
and there you have your little macaron now a lot of people do say that macarons
are better if you put them in the refrigerator for about two days before
you eat them 24 hours to 48 hours I know that's very
difficult so they're perfect to just eat right away but if you do want to let
them sit in the refrigerator for a little while you can do that I would
take them out about 10 minutes before serving them to take the chill off and
these also freeze very very well you can put them in an airtight container and
put them in the freezer for up to three months but you do want to pull them out
of the freezer and let them sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes before
serving them if you do freeze them now that's it for today's video I really
hope you enjoyed this tutorial and if you did go ahead and give it a thumbs up
make sure you're subscribed so you never miss a video and I'm always happy to
answer any of your questions you can leave those down in the comment section
and I'll be back next time with another recipe tutorial