Easy French Macaron Recipe (Macaroons)
I am often asked why have my macarons failed?! Why are there no feet?! Why have the macaron shells cracked? And which recipe do you use for your macarons? So here it is… french macaron recipe and troubleshooting.
On a recent holiday I found a 200 year old cookbook on my mums bookshelf. It tells that King Henry VIII granted an estate in Leadenhall Street to a Mistress Cornewallies in reward for the fine puddings that she presented to him. Follow these easy steps to make macarons fit for a king. You will aquire such indulgence that is pleasing to the palate and if you’re lucky enough perhaps you too will be granted an estate!
The picture above shows the 200 year old macaron recipe. They called them almond puffs. Personally I prefer to make them using my electric mixer using the recipe below.
French Macaron Recipe Ingredients
4 large egg whites (or 5 small) approx 140g (4.94 ounces)
1/3 cup or 70g (2.47 ounces) caster sugar (also known as superfine sugar)
1 1/2 cups or 230g (8.11 ounces) pure icing sugar. IF you wish to use icing mixture INSTEAD of icing sugar you will need 1 3/4 cups or 275g (9.7 ounces) icing mixture
1 cup or 120g (4.23 ounces) almond meal
2g (0.07 ounces) salt (tiny pinch)
gel food colouring (optional) note too much liquid will make the macarons fail so if it is your first time making them try with no colour until you’ve got the technique sorted.
Macaron Recipe Directions
This recipe makes approximately 40 shells or 20 filled macarons
Preheat the oven to 150C (302 degrees Fahrenheit)
Sift the almond meal and icing sugar and salt together, discarding any almond lumps that are too big to pass through the sieve.
Place egg whites and caster sugar into a bowl and mix with electric mixer until stiff enough to turn the bowl upside down without it falling out. How long this takes will depend on you mixer.
Continue to whip for 1-2 more minutes.
Add gel or powdered food colouring and continue to mix for a further 20 seconds.
Fold the almond & sugar mixture into the egg whites. This is the most important step and where most first time macaron bakers have trouble.
It should take roughly 30-50 folds using a rubber spatula but obviously this will vary depending on your folding technique. The mixture should be smooth and a very viscous, not runny. Watch the video to see what you are going for. Over-mix and your macarons will be flat and have no foot, under mix and they will not be smooth on top. See the macaron troubleshooting post for examples.
Pipe onto trays lined with baking paper, rap trays on the bench firmly (this prevents cracking) and then bake in the oven for approximately 20 minutes. Make sure you are using NON-stick baking paper or they will stick. Check if the macarons are done by quickly opening the oven and slightly pressing on top of one – if it squishes down slightly it’s not yet ready, close the oven so the oven temp doesn’t change. Taking them out of the oven too soon will mean the insides will drop and you’ll have hollow shells.
PLEASE make sure you watch the macarons FAQ and troubleshooting video. This way you can learn from the mistakes and questions of those who have made them before you.
Filling your macaroons
My favorite is flavoured ganache, but you can use jam and cream, butter cream or just eat them plain.
Ganache Recipe
100g (3.53 ounces) chocolate
30ml cream
Bring the cream to the boil and pour over the chocolate. Let stand for a minute and then stir. If it is not adequately melted then microwave for 20 seconds and stir – repeat until smooth. Allow to cool and thicken before piping onto macarons.
More macaron recipes for you:
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Macaron trouble-shooting & FAQ
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nut free macarons
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orange choc macarons
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 macaron ice cream sandwich |
SEE ALL RECIPES |
chocolate macarons
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fun with macarons
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Salted Caramel Macarons
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My Cookbook
Stores that sell my book listed by country:
http://bit.ly/ARcookbook
All recipe quantities in the book are in grams, ounces and cups.
Please help! I just made a batch and I followed the recipe to a T and my macarons have no feet and they cracked! I rapped them on the bench three times on each side! I weighed out the ingredients and sifted twice. I don’t know what I am doing wrong! Please help!
Hi Chantal, a few ideas 1. check the coloring – try making without it is often a problem 2. check the oven temp with an oven thermometer (mine was out by 25 degrees) macarons like the correct oven temp. 3. watch the FAQ video and see if yours look like the under-mixed ones at 5:21 https://wellness-wave1.news/public_html/macaron-recipe-faq-troubleshooting/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Hi I was just wondering if I could get some clarification on where you say to add pure icing sugar OR icing mixture OR almond meal -however in the directions you say to add icing mixture and almond meal?
Thank you!!
-Lily
Hi lily, you can use pure icing mixture or pure icing sugar the amounts differ if using cups to measure which is why they are both mentioned.
You need almond meal in the recipe.
Hi, I am so excited to make these but I have a few questions. Can I use ground almonds? And can I also use powders food dye?
Thank you
Hi Natikagm, yes powdered food dye is good, almond meal is the same as ground almonds but it needs to be very finely ground.
hi there I have made macaroons before but I wanted to try your version. i banged my trays on the bench but they still cracked. why would that be?
Hi Melissa, cracks can be due to oven temp, undermining (see faq video), streaks of under-folded mixture or most often the colouring used.
Hi Ann,
I finally attempted my first macaroons following your video. But they did not turn out like yours. My problem was piping the mixture onto the tray. While piping, I was forming a round shape. So as i did that it had swirls in them so when I tapped the tray the twirls weren’t flattening. So I just manually smoothed them out. But they did not turn out like yours.
Do I just squeeze in one spot to form a mound and then release? But won’t the size be too small?
I also used the blue gel. but how do I prevent them from browning on the top? I timed it for 20 minutues.
Last question. I used wax paper and not parchment paper. Is there a difference between the two when baking? I noticed wax paper gives out a waxy burn smell while baking.
Aside from all that, the cookies tasted really delicious and my family still enjoyed them.
I am excited to try it again. Hopefully it will look like yours.
Hi Sheila, I believe that wax paper is not meant for baking, anyone from a country that has wax paper want to chime in here? If you are needing to smooth them once piped and banged on the bench then they are under-folded. Try watching the faq video to see different levels of folding from under to over to get an idea of just how much to mix.
FAQ video: https://wellness-wave1.news/public_html/macaron-recipe-faq-troubleshooting/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
is there a way to make these macarons with a sugar substitute?
Hi Lauren, I don’t imagine so but why not make a quarter recipe and experiment.
I looked around for super fine sugar and no success. Can i use granulated sugar?
hi sheila, if you look up a few questions brittney used granulated sugar and processed it to try and make superfine sugar, but not powdered sugar. If you just use the granualted sugar it gives mixed results – see the FAQ video for pictures
Does the temperature of the surrounding or the temperature of the batter affect the success of perfect macarons?
Hello, Ann!
**Warning! Loads of information! >.<**
I've actually found this precious gem of a recipe for a while now on your blog for about five or six months. I haven't gotten around to it because of a couple of problems. For one: almond meal. I live in Hawai'i, so when it comes to finding things that are normal in most stores on the mainland, this was one of them. I also live on the Big Island rather than O'ahu, so it's even harder. I've had to go to two health food stores before I found almond meal. Unfortunately, being in the middle of the Pacific ocean, that means a higher price for a number of items. It ran about $16.00 at one particular store for a bag of 1 lb (~454 g) of almond meal. I ended up getting almond flour instead for almost half the price. Almond flour is just about the same, really. The next time I take a trip to Costco, I'm buying almonds to make my own meal.
My second dilemma: Caster sugar. For a while, I didn't know what that was, and even asked around at a few high-end chef and bakery stores if they had it on O'ahu. They didn't know what it was, as strange as that may sound…then I finally found my answer. "Caster sugar" here in the States is called "Baker's Sugar", and those who are scrambling around to find it may be happy to know that the company C&W has it available in the baking isle. But, again, being in my location, about 1.5 lbs (~680 g) would run me about $7.50. So, I made my own Caster by placing Granulated in my blender and pulsed until the right consistency. (* On a side note: for those who don't know the difference, there is Granulated sugar that's standard for overall things, and Confectioner's sugar, or icing/powdered. Baker's Sugar is the median between the two.)
So, after recovering from making chocolate souffles, I finally made your recipe today! 😀 I believe I let the KitchenAid stand mixer over mix a little because I was busy trying to sift through the bloody almond flour. So much unneeded chunks…I ended up dumping more into the sifter because the large pile of bits was too significant to ignore. And since it's getting closer to summer, the humidity has been an average of 80+% these days, so it was making my powdered sugar stick together some. I overlooked us needing to use either gel or powder coloring…I did two drops of green liquid food coloring and they seem to be all right. But you're correct about loss of color during baking, as I've seen with mine.
In the end, I ended up having hallow, crispy, chewy macaroons with about 96% of my batches cracked on top, but they were no less delicious. I followed the Metric system you had rather than the (cringe-worthy) Imperial. Some had feet, and some were near perfect. I'm not disheartened though because this IS the first time making something new after all. Over time I'll get better and perfect it.
Perhaps my oven was too high though? 120 degrees Celsius equals to roughly about 248 degrees Fahrenheit, but your usual standard ovens these days don't like minuscule degrees, so I went to 250 degrees F. The next time I bake this, I'll try and see if that's the case. Sometimes if it's too high, the top will solidify quicker and will crack further down the road. I have done the rapping of the tray on the ground and counter as well (since I have no bench, lol). I'll also half the recipe since it's just my Mom and I wanting to explore the culinary world.
Here's my picture included of my macaroons! ….or whatever is left. Mom and I chowed down on the rejects plain first, then whipped cream from the can, and then chocolate syrup. The filling in these are actually chocolate chips melted in a glass, heat proof bowl over a pot of simmering water with butter. After cooling, they will solidify pretty fairly. I didn't have melting chocolate, nor cream to do the ginache you had up, and I wasn't going to do condense milk either because it's the fat in the cream that I'd need. Because these turned out hollow with some holes, using the Lilikoi butter I made some time ago was out of the question. Thank you so much for having this up! I will be commenting again the next time! Until then, take care! Mahalo, and aloha~ 🙂 🙂 🙂
Hi Brittney, for you first attempt and difficulty in getting ingredients you did so well. I just looked up postage costs to see if it would be cheaper to send to you from here, but $85 postage for some sugar and almond meal is going to make for expensive macarons. Hollow can be from over mixing the meringue or a drop in oven temp – if you take them out too early or open the oven to see if they are done. Oven temp is really important with macarons. The sugar you use can effect the outcome too if you watch the FAQ video there is pictures there of using all icing sugar and all standard sugar. If you can’t get cream you can use milk to make ganache just use slightly less than you would cream.
Hi Ann,
Another success with coconut macarons, I used your frosting book recipe and made way too much of fillings. Can I freeze the left overs? or next time just halve it?
hi diana yes just freeze in a ziploc bag.
Can you freeze french macaroons and if so are there any special preparations required to freeze the shells before filling? I enjoy your site.
Hi Mary, I have never frozen them due to them being eaten so quickly if making a few days ahead I put unfilled in an airtight container with baking paper in between the layers. I know that they can be frozen but can’t offer any personal tips sorry.
Hi ann
How many pieces can i get from this mixture
Hi sabrina, 20 complete or 40 shells (plus a few for taste testing) in the size shown.
Hi Ann,
I figured out my problem with the cracked shell. It was my baking tray and my oven. One of my tray is harder to hold on to when rapping it on the bench. Those ones came out cracked. The other was perfect. I also baked it one tray at a time with another tray on the top shelf. I just want to say thank you for your feedback and for your blog. I’m looking forward to make other flavours!
Yay, sweet success 🙂
Hi ann,
I was able to read through most of the comments and found the answer to my question. Thanks again. I will let you know how they turn out
Hi shells, sorry i answer all the comments once a week once the kids are all tucked into bed, glad you found the answer.
Hi Ann,
i really enjoyed watching your video and appreciate the way you explained your recipe esp the troubleshooting part. What is caster sugar and where can i get it. i can’t wait to make my first batch of macaroons.
Hi Shella, thanks, if this is your first time making macarons make sure you also watch the FAQ video. Caster sugar is very fine sugar (but not as fine as icing sugar or confectioners sugar). In the USA there is a sugar called superfine sugar which is similar.
more pics
Hi Ann, I made a green tea macaron last night using your chocolate flavoured shell and replace the chocolate powder with green tea powder. I mixed it in 40 molds and rapped it on the bench a few time on each side but it still cracked. On the last bit of the batch, there is no foot at all. Do you think I still overmixed it? and the feet is not as thick as yours. Any feedback will be appreciated.
Hi diana, it could be the green tea powder causing you grief, if you have made them before without the cracks, some of them look ok and some look possibly under-mixed. Try the standard recipe and swap one tablespoon of icing sugar for green tea powder and see if that works.
hi
it is my macarons! 🙁
why?
Hi zahra, I do wish you could come and bake them in my kitchen so i could see how this happened. I spent a day once trying to make my macarons fail by doing different things – so I could answer your question, but none of them looked like this. Have you ever made them without colour? My first guess would be the coloring has killed them. Also were they on a middle shelf in the oven with the oven closed until done?
Ann! Your recipe and method was so easy to follow. I have to be honest, my first attempt was a bust. It seems the gel colouring killed my egg whites. I’ll be using powdered colours from now on. However, I used cocoa for my second attempt and filled the macarons with a chocolate earl-grey ganache. They turned out perfectly!! Thank you for posting the recipe and video!
Yummm, they look so good I would love one to eat right now as I answer questions.
some more pic