As I've said before, I work in the news industry, which means I work holidays. Because of this I usually try to make something special to take in on holidays. Last year, I made the Star Wars cookies. This year, since I am currently deep in my macaron obsession, I decided to make Red, White, and Blue macarons for Memorial Day.
I've been working on perfecting macarons for over a year now and there have been many failed attempts. I used books and I used recipes I found online, but it wasn't until I followed the steps in the book "Macarons: Authentic French Cookie Recipes from the Macaron Cafe" by Cecile Cannone, that I finally made macarons.
My first attempt were regular macarons, flavored only by the almond flour, with a whipped, dark chocolate ganache filling. They were fantastic.
I decided to make patriotic macarons for Memorial Day. Red, White and Blue...raspberry and blueberry cookies with vanilla buttercream icing in between.
Now, you'll notice that my macarons don't look exactly like the pictures in the book. I'm still working on perfecting these. They aren't as smoothly rounded as they should be and I think that's because I might whip the eggs a little longer than I'm supposed to. This makes the batter thicker and it doesn't settle like it should. But baking is sometimes a trial and error experiment. I've found that these macarons look better than the last ones I made and the next ones will look better than these. I also think I make the cookies too big. Next time, I'm going to use a smaller piping tip.
Even if they don't seem as smooth as they should, the consistency is just right. A crisp outer shell with a chewy, soft interior.
The first thing I do is trace circles onto the back of the parchment paper. This will act as a guide for piping the batter.
One of the great things about macarons is that they don't require a lot of ingredients.
I measured out the almond flour and powdered sugar. After doing some research online, I learned the best way to flavor the macarons is with crumbled, freeze dried berries.
I eyeballed it and put in what looked like enough raspberries and ran it through the food processor with the almond flour and sugar.
I then poured the room temperature ege whites into the mixer and set to whipping them with salt (I had the eggs out of the fridge for about 12 hours. Room temperature ingredients are very important in macarons).
After adding the superfine sugar, I colored the eggs with red, gel food coloring. Apparently the liquid food coloring should not be used to color macarons, the added moisture will affect the cookie.
The next step is to add the egg whites to the almond flour mixture and fold them together.
I then piped the batter onto the parchment paper.
The next step is very important, you have to let them sit for at least 15 minutes before putting them in to the oven. This is needed to create the "foot" of the macaron.
They bake up rather quickly, but have to rest on the parchment paper for 10 minutes before removing them.
After making all the raspberry cookies, I repeated the procedures with freeze dried blueberries and blue food coloring.
For the filling I used the trusty ol' Wilton buttercream recipe. I took one cookie, spread a small amount of icing on the flat edge and put another cookie on top.
They taste absolutely delicious. I love that the blueberry cookies remind me of Boo-berry cereal and makes me want to make even more of them.
I'm learning as I go along. Next time I won't whip the eggs as long and I'm going to pipe out smaller cookies. But the texture and the taste are perfect!
