- If you ever wanted to make macaron,
but are intimidated by this finicky French cookie,
then fear not.
I'm here to save you with all my tips
and tricks to make them right the first time.
If you like this video,
don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe.
Hey, you're watching "Preppy Kitchen,"
where I, John Kanell,
teach you how to make delicious homemade dishes
to share with your family and friends.
These macaron will be ready before you know it.
So let's get started.
First off,
let's talk about the eggs.
I'm using three large egg whites for this recipe
but there's a catch.
I'm not gonna use exactly three large egg whites,
so I'll be using my scale.
Best practice is to crack your eggs separately one
at a time and then separate the yolks out.
You don't wanna throw away all the egg whites
because one egg broke.
Zeroed my scale out.
So let's add the egg white in.
Clean hands are the best way to separate egg yolks.
Okay.
Repeat that process for the other three eggs.
So I have 110 grams right now.
I'm gonna spoon some out so I have exactly the right amount.
100 grams, exactly.
Set this aside,
wash your hands,
and we're gonna get the rest of our ingredients out.
For this recipe,
I will be using my food processor.
Here's a little bit of a secret.
If you look at any brand of almond flour,
it'll say super fine.
This is technically true.
But when you open the bag up,
you're gonna see fairly large pieces of almonds in here
and in order to get a professional looking,
smooth macaron,
you wanna have pulverized, very, very fine ingredients.
So this is gonna go into the food processor
to break it up and we'll be sifting and processing,
sifting and processing.
So I'm adding 140 grams or about one and a half cups
of almond flour in here,
and you can see there's like big lumps in here.
It clumped up.
You really wanna break it up.
Okay.
The other primary ingredient in the macaron is sugar.
So we're gonna use 130 grams of confectioners' sugar.
Zero the scale out.
So this is about a cup of confectioners' sugar,
but really you can pack it down,
you could fluff it up,
and change the amount that you're actually having
in your measuring cup.
The scale is so much more accurate.
Set our scale aside and now we're gonna process this up.
Whiz, whiz, whiz, so that it breaks all the pieces up
and mixes it together and I'll show you a couple
of things that I do to get things the right way.
If you don't have a food processor at home,
you could actually blend this up in your blender
and then sift.
It's gonna give you a very similar result
and it's what I did before I got a food processor.
(motor whirring)
It's kinda crazy but every once in a while,
I will take the top off and give it a good shake.
A lot of the super fine pieces fall to the bottom
and you wanna break those up and let it all mix.
So it really whizzed away.
I don't wanna turn it into almond butter.
Like right now we processed it up,
but look at these giant lumps.
Right now I'm gonna just kind of force everything
through the sifter the first time
and then I'm gonna sift it again,
and if there's any big pieces,
I'll just discard them.
So you'll be folding this into your meringue,
and that is a whole process.
You don't wanna be folding in like big clumps
or have a clump you have to worry about.
So get a nice powdery, fine mixture.
I discarded some of the big clumps and this is ready to go.
I'm gonna set it aside,
and now we will be making the body of our macaron,
which is composed of a meringue.
A really common mistake when people
are making these cookies is the meringue.
It's not stiff enough.
So I wanna show you what it should look like.
I'm gonna use my scale of one last time.
I need 90 grams of granulated sugar
for this and that is around half a cup,
but it's a little bit less.
Who washed this bowl?
Do you know who washed the bowl?
If you're circumspect,
go ahead and just wipe it down with vinegar or lemon juice.
You don't want any grease in there.
Pop that whisk on.
We're gonna add the egg whites right into the bowl.
Before you get started,
just make sure you have some cream of tartar handy.
This is an acid.
It actually comes from the wine making process
and it's gonna help stabilize the egg whites
in the meringue.
You could also sub in like a couple drops
of white vinegar instead.
You're subbing it out for a different acid, basically.
(mixer whirring)
Mixed on high.
Once it gets frothy,
we'll dump in our quarter teaspoon of cream of tartar.
One quarter teaspoon, in you go.
Okay now we're gonna mix on high.
(mixer whirring)
Actually, this is one of the most important parts.
Turning the mixer off for you.
You wanna gently, slowly spoon the sugar in.
So watch how I do it.
It goes in very slowly because the sugar's dissolving
as the egg whites mix.
Gives you the best meringue.
If you just dump the sugar in,
it's not a good scene.
(mixer whirring)
Slowly, ever so slowly.
You spin it out.
You're in no hurry.
Now we're at the soft peak stage.
This is what it looks like.
You lift it up.
It's a beautiful peak
but it flops over at the end.
That's totally fine.
This is the stage where we're gonna add our vanilla
and if you're inclined,
the food coloring as well.
Two drops should be good.
Okay, mix it up on high.
After just a little bit of mixing,
I can see a stiff peak.
Maybe it go a little bit.
You just wanna have a peak that holds up against gravity.
The final test is to see if it holds up
against gravity over your head.
I'm gonna finish whisking it by hand.
I know how the meringue should feel.
It'll give me some resistance,
and this way you won't overmix the batter.
You wanna have a stiff peak
but if your meringue is too stiff,
it could lead to hollow macaron,
which is not good.
This is not as close as I thought.
I'm gonna run the mixer more.
Okay.
Take a look at that.
Perfectly firm, nice and stiff.
The final step is to see if it's totally ready.
It is because it's not falling on my head.
It should stay in the bowl.
We're ready to fold.
Get your dry mixture out and we're gonna spoon
maybe around 1/3 of a cup into our meringue.
We got like two big spoonfuls.
We're gonna fold this in now.
The folding is a crucial step.
It's called the macaronage.
Not with that accent though.
So here you're gently folding in the dry ingredients.
It's really funny because normally if you're making a cake
and folding in egg whites with the dry ingredients,
you're gonna be so delicate.
You're like, oh my gosh,
every single air bubble is very important
to me in my baking.
For a macaron,
it's a little bit different because yes,
you wanna be gentle,
but you're also gonna have to be a little rough with this.
You wanna get some of the air bubbles out.
It has too many right now.
After that little bit is folded in,
we're gonna add in like another half
of the mixture and fold that in as well.
And when I fold,
I am scraping the bottom of the bowl,
cutting down the middle,
scraping and cutting.
You're not mixing.
You're folding things in gently to preserve the meringue.
Once that's mostly incorporated,
we can add the rest of the dry ingredients in.
We're down to one bowl.
This is a success.
You want this to gracefully fall from your spatula.
It should be able to form a figure eight.
Right now nothing is drizzling down.
So I need to keep folding.
Okay, so it's all folded in now
but look at these big air bubbles.
This is unacceptable.
So the next stage of macaronage
is to start pressing out the air bubble.
So gently press the meringue up the sides,
and as you do so,
you're changing the consistency of the batter.
Okay, this batter is looking beautiful.
I'm very excited.
Here is the test.
As it drips down,
you should be able to form a figure eight.
It just formed an eight.
So that means I'm ready to stop.
I'm gonna pipe my macaron out with a 1A tip.
It's like a medium-large round.
Normally I would say just snip the tip off the piping bag.
But the piping is really important for these cookies
because if you go in at an angle,
if they're a little wonky,
you'll be able to see that in the finished product.
I actually like to use a heavier weight baking sheet
with walls.
I've found that if I was using a cookie sheet
which didn't have any walls,
I would just get uneven rises in my little macarons.
So the walled one I feel is the best.
We're gonna add just a dab of meringue to the corners
to hold our sheet down.
And now put a piece of parchment paper on.
I've made these using silicon mats,
and I find the parchment paper is just better.
If you have any flavor requests,
let me know in the comments,
I'm all ears.
I kinda wanted to try a chocolate macaron next,
but maybe green tea?
I dunno.
Now we're gonna pipe things out.
Roughly the size of a quarter,
maybe a bit bigger or smaller.
It's kind of up to you and what size cookie you want.
Give them about an inch of space in between.
Here's how it goes.
You're gonna squeeze it out,
stop squeezing,
and then give it a twist.
That will finish it off and it'll have a nice shape.
Squeeze straight down,
stop squeezing,
give it a twist.
And then just repeat that process.
Your macaron will sag and spread a bit.
That's okay.
If they really turn into a soup,
that's not okay.
We worked so hard to get it exactly right.
There's still a couple air bubbles hiding in here,
waiting to sabotage you.
So what do we wanna do next?
We're gonna tap it down.
You're just gonna shock those air bubbles out
and bring them to the top.
If you see a couple just below the surface
and they're not popping,
you can use a skewer or a pin
and then this give them a little bit of a deflate.
When your macaron are ready,
you'll see they're less shiny,
they're more matte,
and they're dry to the touch.
I'll be able to put my finger gently on top
and I won't get any meringue on my finger.
All right,
set these aside and be back in a flash.
After about 40 minutes,
my macaron have become less glossy on top
and I can run my finger across
without disturbing the surface.
These are ready to go into the center rack of your oven,
which is preheated to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
They're gonna bake for about 14 minutes,
give or take.
I like to flip them over halfway through.
It really depends on your oven,
so keep an eye out for them.
You know they're ready once they've risen up dramatically
and they're dry underneath.
My macaron spent 14 minutes in the oven at 300 degrees.
Once they've cooled down a bit,
you can fill them with anything you'd like.
A whipped ganache,
American buttercream.
Everything will be delicious in this.
My all time favorite
which I'm using today is French buttercream.
It has a lot of egg yolks, butter, and sugar,
and it's pure magic.
Pipe along the edge and I'm using a small round tip.
Then fill the inside.
Sandwich those two pieces together,
just like that.
They're ready to enjoy,
although they're gonna taste best
and have the most amazing texture
if you let them sit in the fridge.
Cover them up in a container of course,
for a few days.
If you like this recipe,
check out my French playlist.
So good.
I'll see you in the next video.