Easy French Macarons

Finally I took the jump!!! Yes! and the results were pretty good I must admit... I love french macarons... they are delicious, so delicate, crunchy, chewy... but I've always been intimidated by them... always thought they were to difficult to make, too complicated... I don't know... so whenever I wanted to enjoy them, I had no choice but to buy them. But giving them a try and making them has always been like a pending subject in the back of my mind. So finally after surfing the net for a simple french macaron recipe to start with I decided to go with Elle's recipe, and then added my own twist to them ;)  

Easy French Macarons

(makes 16)

3 egg whites

1 2/3 cup confectioner's sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

1 cup finely ground almonds

Directions

Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat

Beat the egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment until whites are foamy; beat in the white sugar and continue beating until egg whites are glossy, fluffy and hold soft peaks. Sift confectioner's sugar and ground almonds in a separate bowl and quickly fold the almond mixture into the egg whites, about 30 strokes.

Here is where I changed the recipe, I made different flavors as you can see in the picks, so I took small amounts of batter and added the natural food colorings and different flavors (matcha green tea, orange, coffee, raspberry extracts, etc...) Be very careful when incorporating the coloring and extracts since you don't want the batter to loose its volume. Fold them carefully until incorporated.

Spoon small amounts of batter into a plastic bag with a small corner cut off and pipe test a disk of batter, about 1 1/2 inches in diameter, onto prepared baking sheet. If the disk of batter holds a peak, instead of flattening immediately, gently fold the batter a few more times and retest.

When batter is mixed enough to flatten immediately into an even disk, spoon into pastry bag fitted with a plain round tip. Pipe the batter onto the baking sheet in rounds, leaving space between the disks. Let the piped cookies stand out at room temperature until they form a hard skin on top, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 285 degrees F (140 degrees C).

Bake cookies until set but not browned, about 10 minutes; let cookies cool completely before filling.

Basic Macaron Buttercream Filling

1 stick of softened butter

5 oz of powdered sugar, add a little more sugar if it's too runny

1/8 teaspoon of the desired flavoring (vanilla, almond, orange, pistachio, coffee...)

Stir all of these ingredients until you have a light and taste buttercream. Then add the desired food coloring for each flavor.

For some of mine I used raspberry jam and  nutella, since I was making a bunch of different flavors I wanted to make some of them simple :)

I wanted to introduce my son to different flavors like matcha, so I decided to make these and top them with these cute Circus cupcake toppers and I sure worked... He devoured them! Hehe.