Easy Macarons

Happy Sunday! It’s Catherine from The 10 Minute Fix and Small Steps are Perfect—my new book!

I promised you my easy macaron recipe. Let’s do this! It’s ideal for your gluten-free friends and family.

First, though, thank you to everyone who has jumped in and ordered Small Steps are Perfect. It’s a little book of comfort & joy and I hope you love it. This morning I received another beautiful message from a reader who said, “Just got my Small Steps Are Perfect book today—when will there be a third, please…so excited!” Thanks, Ingrid. I’m grinning.

Also this:

“You’ll want to share this book, but you’ll want to keep it for yourself, so save a lot of guilt and buy two.” Love!

If you’d like to pick up a copy for you (and I hope one for a friend!), the links are below. Thank you for your support! Writers can only keep writing when readers buy and share books, and I appreciate you.

Now on to these beauties….

Can you see how delicious they are?

The pep talk: yes, you DO need to weigh everything and you DO have to be exact.

You’ll need:

A scale.
A fine metal strainer to sift the almond flour.
Piping bag with a round tip.
Almond flour, icing sugar, caster sugar, butter, vanilla, eggs, and GEL food colouring (not liquid).

Okay, let’s make this easy. All the YouTubers act like it’s rocket science but I think it can be practical and fun (that’s my take on life, actually).

The Macaron Shells:

Weigh and set aside these ingredients in separate bowls:

260 grams egg whites (not from a bag…from real eggs…and at room temperature)
172 grams caster sugar
312 grams almond flour
458 grams icing sugar
(You’ll add a few drops of GEL food colouring to the egg whites later)

The filling:

230 grams (1 cup) butter
380 grams icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

Make the shells:

Whip egg whites to firm peaks, and gradually add caster sugar. I use my Kitchenaid mixer.
Add a few drops of GEL food colouring and mix. So pretty!
In a big bowl, sift almond flour and icing sugar together through a metal strainer. Discard chunky bits. Weigh again and make sure you have 770grams total weight. (Yes, you have to.)
CAREFULLY and SLOWLY, mix the dry ingredients into the egg whites in your mixer until BARELY combined. I turn my mixer on and off, take it slowly and barely mix together. Nobody tells you to do it this way, but if you’re CAREFUL and don’t over mix, it saves you a lot of time and painful mixing by hand.
Then you need to macronage. Transfer the mixture to a wide bowl, use a spatula or a scraper and fold, fold, fold until the mixture falls off the spatula in a ‘figure 8’ ribbon without breaking. Then stop. Don’t overmix.
Pour mixture into a piping bag with a round tip.
Line cookie sheets with baking paper.
Pipe small 2 cm (1 inch) shells. Aim in the middle, hold the piping bag upright and squeeze a ‘dot' — it will spread a little. Whack the finished tray on the counter to remove air bubbles.
THE SECRET — let dry for 30 mins to an hour. You should be able to run your finger across the top of the shell. This creates the ‘feet’ on the macaron shell.
Preheat oven to 160 C fan forced. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
Cool, match up the shells, then make the filling in a mixer. Whip the butter for about five minutes, add the icing sugar and the vanilla and that’s it. Pipe the filling onto one shell and top with a matching shell.