The Secret to making French Macarons!

Macarons were originated in France in the 1830s. It is a sweet confectionery that is made with egg whites, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder and food coloring. In between the macaron, it is normally filled with either buttercream or jam. The confectionery is characterized by its smooth, domed top, ruffled circumference, also called the “foot”, flat base, mildly moist and easily melted into mouths.

I’m totally in love with French macarons! So, I decided to try making them myself. And I remember it took me a total of three days to master how to do it right. I looked up various recipes online and tried it out over and over again. The recipe I tried and succeeded was from tartelette, she has many different recipes of desserts on her blog.

There are three main things to remember when you are making macarons; temperature, timing and you need old egg whites. (That’s the secret to it!) And of course you also need really good baking sheet because you don’t want your macarons to stick to it at the end.

When I say temperature, I mean during the time of baking, the temperature of the oven has to be set just right. If it’s too hot, it will just burn the macarons and it wouldn’t be moist on the inside. And if its not hot enough, it wont be able to rise. So, you need a good oven that you can change the temperature consistently so that your macaroons won’t get burnt.

Timing is also a really important factor. You need to know how long to beat the egg white for because if you beat them for too long, they will just turn into meringues instead of macarons. And if you under beat them, they won’t rise because the texture is just not right. Also, after beating the egg whites, you will need to pipe them on a baking tray and let them set for about an hour or two. This is to form the “foot” around it.

Lastly, you need old egg whites. When I say old I mean a day of two old and not when they start to stink. If you’re still worried about using old eggs, you can check out here where they tell you how to tell when an egg is too old to consume and that it is safe if it just a day or two old. The reason why we need to use old eggs is because it gives a better elastic result and also older eggs have thinner whites so the overall outcome is better when beating.

That’s the secret to making French macarons, so if you were to ever give it a try remember to joint down these things to do. Good luck!