Très Français, Non?

Ok, so what's very french? Me? I wish. But, I'll be faux French just for a bit. How am I possibly going to achieve that? By attempting to make the very delicious Parisian Macarons.

As promised, I'm providing a step-by-step with pictures that I did to make my very first ever batch of macarons. I've always heard that they're hard and has a high failure rate, but I did it, and boy, are they ever yummy!

Macarons

- 4 egg whites
- 200 grams cup icing sugar
- 110 grams ground almond
- 2 tbs granulated sugar (aka regular sugar)

Before you do anything, take your egg whites and 'age' them overnight. Then, go to sleep.

Next day, begin by preheating your oven to 300F. Take your egg whites and whisk them on low speed with your electric mixer until foamy. Then add your 2 tbs of sugar slowly. 

Until your mixture looks like that. Kind of meringue-like and whipped cream-like. Can you believe that's from egg whites and sugar?

Take your ground almond out, and measure 110 grams on a scale. Put it in a bowl. Then measure 200 grams of icing sugar and put it in the bowl with the ground almonds. 

Get a spoon and mix it together, and make sure it's nicely powdery and loose. No chunks of ground almond sticking together. Done? 

Then, you add it to your whipped cream-like egg whites and fold with a spatula. It should look evenly mixed and kind of grainy and sandy-ish (because of the ground almonds)

Take out a cookie sheet and parchment paper, and measure your parchment paper to fit perfectly to your sheet. Get a pastry bag and tip and squeeze small circles on your sheet. (I didn't have the right tip, so mine were a little big)

Set your oven to 300F and bake for 20 minutes. Let it cool for a white. Then, you put filling in the middle on one shell and place another on top... like a sandwich! 

And voilà! Your macarons are ready! I used blackberry jam, strawberry jam and nutella as filling. My macarons came out a bit nutty, so I personally prefer the nutella filling, but the jams make it more dessert-like. 

Success to me! I was actually very scared that it wouldn't work, but considering this was my first time, I quite like the results. I didn't get to make my own filling because I was running out of eggs (I made meringues the night before). But throughout the summer, I will be experimenting with these tasty treats and tweaking them a little bit, and trying different flavours.. exciting right? 

Try them yourself. It's really fun. 

And super yummy! 

Enjoy and bonne chance!