Baking 101: French Macarons

Nutella French Macaron

You simply have to follow the instructions of the recipe to get these beautiful macarons! 

Last summer, I have attempted to make French Macarons with a friend, and failed to succeed all three batches we made. I decided that I will challenge myself to the "most difficult-cookie-to-bake" once again!

This time, I carefully went through the instructions on AllRecipes.
I noticed that I only used regular white sugar last time, but the recipe required confectionary sugar (or icing sugar), so I quickly went to purchase the ingredients I needed to bake these wonderful cookies!

Tips on Baking French Macarons

There are many tips you can find online for successfully bake these cookies; these are some of the "tricks" I find very useful to make fool-proof french macarons: 

   1.  Make sure your almond and sugar are fine enough  

You need to get really fine ground almond and sugar in order to make the surface of your french macaron smooth. One thing you can do is to sift the ground almond and the sugar: you'll notice that when you sift these ingredients, large chunks of almond will show to be quite noticeable. Make sure you don't get these coarse ingredients in your cookies, otherwise it would not turn out beautiful! Note: If you don't have a sifter, use a food processor and pulse it around 45 sec. 

    2.  Beat the egg white till glossy/stiff 

One thing you can do to see whether your egg white is ready is to turn your bowl upside down. If the egg white does not fall then you have reached the stiff point! If it's still runny, then continue beating the egg white till it becomes stiff. Note: when you are turning the bowl upside down, do it carefully and slowly, you don't want to make a mess in your kitchen. 

    3.   Fold the egg white and dry ingredients to the perfect consistency 

The best way to fold your egg white mixture is to use a flexible spatula. By folding and scrapping around the bowl, you will be able to reach and mix all ingredients. Fold the mixture until the mixture will flatten once when you pipe it on a flat surface, if there is still a peak to the piped mixture, fold it a few more times.

    4.   Knock the baking pan on the table a few times

Once the macarons are piped on the baking mat, you will need to knock the baking pan on a flat surface to remove any bubbles inside the macarons. Skipping this step might result in bubbles on the baked macarons' shell.

    5.   Let the macarons sit before putting it in the oven

Now I know that many of you are eager to throw the macarons in the oven after all the fuss you went through, but this step is essential in making beautiful macarons. I remember putting the macarons in the oven right after I piped them in my first try making these cookies, and it turned out a disaster! So the trick here is to leave the macarons sit until the surface of the shell is starting to become solid