French macarons recipe

Details

• Cuisine: French
• Recipe Type: Dessert
• Difficulty: Medium
• Preparation Time: 30 mins
• Cooking Time: 15 mins
• Serves: 24

Step-by-step

1. Grease and line baking sheets with baking parchment.
2. Grind the icing (confectioners') sugar and almonds in a food processor to a very fine powder.
3. Using an electric mixer with a large bowl, whisk the egg whites to a foam then add the caster (superfine) sugar gradually and beat until the meringue stands in soft peaks.
4. If making coloured macarons, gently beat in the gel or paste food colouring now.
5. Tip the almond and sugar mixture on top of the meringue. Using a silicone spatula, sweep around the bowl in a circle and then use the blade edge to make rapid sideways strokes ten times.
6. Repeat five more times. The batter should resemble flowing lava. Repeat until it slowly sinks back on itself.
7. Fill a piping (pastry) bag with the batter and pipe the macaron shells onto the lined baking sheets (see Piping macarons in Techniques).
8. Preheat the oven to 150ºC/300ºF/Gas 2. Leave the trays of shell batter to dry out until a skin forms on each circle - in a warm place this should take around 20 minutes.
9. Bake on a low shelf for 15 minutes. Allow to cool for two minutes then carefully remove from the baking sheets. A few drops of water sprinkled under the paper will steam off any that are stuck.