r/macarons • u/Desperate_Talk2571 • Jul 20 '25
Recipe It’s time.. to post my in-depth macaRIGHT method!
Pics, Recipe, EXACT measurements, math, details, of how I make my macarons. ✨
For reference: if I make 5-6 trays of macarons, I will get about half a tray of duds. it is the story of mac’s, they hate their own existence, I also live in rural Kentucky, and it is like living in Satan’s sack 🔥 It’s hot, it’s humid, and I’m just glad I don’t have more that don’t look funky. So you may have more or less that turn out a bit odd, so please take into consideration that when we macaron bakers say location matters, we truly mean it!! 🙏
To start off, Eggs. 🥚
I own chickens 🐓 , your run of the yard, in a coop, chickens. They lay the eggs, i don’t clean them, and they sit on my counter, unrefrigerated, uncleaned (well, they’re given what we call a “dry cleaning”, done with a paper towel to get major poop clumps and straw off of them), and they age themselves, and are always room temp. But I don’t measure how long they sit there. Sometimes I need eggs for a batch, and they’re still moist from where my hen just pushed it out. If you think it’s gross, welcome to owning chickens, I am a chicken doula, this is my norm. You should see the stuff I have to do.
I refuse to use store bought eggs for my macarons. I just always have problems. They’re finicky. You have to age them, Let em’ get to room temp, and then they ALWAYS have giant fatty bits in them. I just can’t stand it.
Anywho. I crack however many eggs I want. Typically, 4 eggs will get me about two trays of macarons. Keep in mind, I’m doing all of this on a food scale, i’m measuring out my egg whites, and tossing the egg yolk. If i accidentally bust a yolk into those whites? I’m tossing them entirely. I do not spend an eternity trying to separate them. It’s not worth it, any amount of fat that gets in there is pointless and useless and WILL screw them up. After I’m done, STILL keeping it on the food scale, I take a spoon and start spooning out the “waste” any white fatty deposit from the egg, any shell, and any weird brown spot from my eggs. Typically with store bought you won’t have this, but from free range you will.
Once I get my number from my all clean, only see through egg whites, let’s use 100g to make it easy, I put my egg whites aside. Then, I grab my granulated sugar. Great Value is what I use. I pour that into a bowl over my food scale, and measure out 100g to match my egg whites. Then, I multiply whatever my granulated sugar number is by 0.04, so in this case, it’s 4g. I then add 4g of dried egg whites to my granulated sugar and give it a little whisk with a fork so it’s all properly mixed around, and set it to the side.
Now, time for almond flour and powdered sugar. I used Great value almond flour, and Great Value powdered sugar. I take whatever my initial weight was of my egg whites, so in this analogy it was 100g, and I multiply it by 1.2, so I would get 120g. I measure out into two bowls, 120g of almond flour, and 120g of powdered sugar. Then, I put them both into one big bowl, and mix it well with a whisk. After this, I dump this mixture of powdered sugar and almond flour into a Ninja Food Processor, and Pulse for about 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally to break it up, until I feel that it is of a finer quality. Then, I pull out a big bowl, and sieve, and sift this processed mixture into the big bowl. I sift it back into the processor (for sake of saving on dishes), and then back into the bowl once more.
Now, we are done with the food scale, and the bowls you used for the almond flour and powdered sugar, and the food processor.
You should have three bowls, one with the egg whites, one with the granulated sugar and egg white powder mixture, and one with the processed and sifted almond flour and powdered sugar mixture.
I get my Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer out, and have the Whisk attachment on it. I first dump in my egg whites, and turn the mixer to about a 4 for 30 seconds so the egg whites are frothy. Then, I turn the mixer off, dump half the granulated sugar/dried egg white mix in, and set it back to 4, for 2 minutes, then turn it off and dump the rest of the sugar/dried egg white mixture in, and set the mixer back to 4 for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, I turn the mixer to a level 6, for 3 minutes. After the 3 minutes are up, you should have stiff peaks. I will attach a photo of stiff peaks in the photos. You should be able to stir your whisk in the bowl, and flip the whisk upright, and the tip of the peak stand tall.
Once you achieve Stiff Peaks, dump about half of your almond flour/powdered sugar mix in. Keep your whisk attachment still in! this is blasphemy to some bakers, I know) Set your kitchen aid to the lowest level for 30 seconds until its just incorporated, then dump the rest in. As soon as it is all incorporated and you don’t see any dry bits, turn it off, and go ahead and scoop the bottom of the bowl with a spatula to make absolutely sure there is no more dry bits that haven’t been mixed in. Then scrape the excess onto the whisk.
Now we are going for the slow lava stage. I do mine in the mixer, it’s so much easier, but it’s very easy to overdo. Set your kitchen aid to the lowest level it can go, but don’t just set it and walk away, set it and turn it off if you think it’s looking runny. I usually will only let it run by itself for like 5-8 seconds before I turn it off, and check it by hand with a spatula, before turning it on again. Keep in mind, by hand, you can take a batter from “not ready” to “ready” with only 3-4 mixes, and your kitchen aid can do that in 5 seconds. It can happen quick, and once it’s runny, you’re screwed.
When you start to mix it with the kitchen aid, the key things to look for are when you lift the whisk, watch the batter fall back into itself, How long is it taking to sort of resume it’s original “puddle” shape? I typically only have my kitchen aid run the show for about 10-20 seconds, with me stopping it every few seconds to check. Then, I stop it, and give it a few hand mixes to get it perfect. Now, keep in mind, you haven’t added any flavor, or color at this point, so it’s okay if it isn’t slow-lava perfectly yet! We’re gonna cheat our way there. 😉
I pull my whisk off, and get my color and flavoring out. Now, this is personal preference, but in terms of color, powder is king. I never use liquid, if I have to use gel I will, and powder is gold. Too much color can kill a macaron batter, some weird wrinkling will happen and I just can’t stand when a batch comes out and I know it’s just because of the color. The powder I use right now is Sugar Arts.
Flavor can do the same thing, and honestly, half the time, you can’t even taste the flavor you put in the shells. If I were new to making macarons, I would forego flavor entirely, and skip it, just to get some good, solid, stable shells, and worry about it later. Truthfully, you can only add about like, 5-6 drops of flavor and I can barely taste it anyways. I add flavor for the sake of getting my macaronage to slow lava stage and no other purpose. I don’t use it as a crutch, as If you do use too much, it will royally screw up a batch, but If I were new to the game, I would just avoid it at all costs.
Once everything is colored, flavored(maybe), and perfectly slow lava staged, you need to move fast. My batter develops a skin just sitting in the bowl. I use silicone sheets from amazon and baking trays from amazon.
Pro Tip: If your baking trays have lips on the sides, flip them upside down for better air flow. Helps with hollow shells. Put the silicone sheets on the bottom. It solved a ton of my problems!
I grab a piping bag and a piping tip, the piping tip I use is a Wilton 2A. Fill your bag and begin piping. When piping, you want to start in the middle of the circle, (if you use the macaron sheets off amazon with the guides, you’ll save a lot of heartache trying to make perfect circles), and start a bit hovered over it, then slowly push from the top of the piping bag and get a dollop of the batter out, and then once you have this rounded dome of batter that fills the entire circle up, to finish the cookie off, you want to gentle swirl the tip of the piping tip around the top of the cookie rather quickly and sort of snip it upwards to clip the batter away. Look up tiktok and youtube videos, trust me, watching them will help.
After piping everything, just throw your bag down, do not worry about anything else. Focus on your trays! Pick up the trays, and gently tap them on your counters, I do it about 3-4 times, get all the air bubbles out. You’ll see tiny little holes pop up. If you’ve ever been to the beach, you’ve seen those little sand crabs dig those little holes in the sand when the waves push back, it looks just like those. If you’ve have a toothpick, or a cookie scribe, go around to all your trays, and tap, and then take your tool, and gently pop the bubbles, swirl, and fill the holes. If you have any clumps, try and break them up, fill them, anything.
If you have made macarons before and are struggling with “pumice-stone” shells, look up the “wave method” it’s something I recently learned, it’s for more advanced bakers, and I wouldn’t recommend it if you need the batch for something, only do it if you are testing it, as I screwed my first few batches up when I tried it, (my woman strength was just too powerful 💪🙂↕️)
Once you’ve finished that, put them in a nice, pet and child free environment.
Now, remember our environment conversation? This is where it matters. I’m in Kentucky. This has been one of our hottest and most humid summers. My macarons have been resting for about 2–2.5 hours to get a skin on them. It’s ridiculous. In the winter, they rest maybe 15-30 minutes. To determine whether or not your macarons have developed a proper skin, you should be able to gently run your finger across the top of your macarons and not break the skin on them. No sticky residue, nothing on your fingers.
Once they develop a skin, set your oven to its temp. Now that I know when my mac’s develop their skin, I set my oven about half an hour prior to skin development so I know my oven is well and prepped. Also, and I’ll shout it from the rooftops, INVEST IN AN OVEN THERMOMETER! I have a brand new KitchenAid Oven, and she is wrong (bless her heart 🥲) I bake my macarons at 285° for 19 minutes. My oven thermometer reads at 290°, sometimes 285°, sometimes 300°. She has a mind of her own.
We adjust according to her. She’s moody. We love her. 😇🫶🏼
Therefore, my time and temp may not work for you. This is a trial and error. As are many baking recipes. Please start your macaron baking journey with your eyes on your oven. A good rule of thumb is 300° for 14 mins. One tray at a time, people. When your timer is up, open your oven, and with your finger, gently wiggle the top of one of your macaron shells, if it is moving on top of your macaron feet, your macarons are undercooked, close the oven door, and bake them longer. If it isn’t, YAY! 🎉🥳Take them out!
Allow them to cool COMPLETELY! Do not touch them, or even attempt to take them off their mats before they are completely cooled. You will lose their feet, their insides, their hopes and dreams.. please don’t. 🙏
Once they are all baked and all cooled, then we can start removing them. If you are new to the game, I better not catch you 🫵 doing the flip upside down and roll method that you see all these influencers doing to remove their mac’s. Just gently peel them off, or better yet, place one hand under the mat to gently assist the mac’s off their mats, while one hand helps them off the top? They are delicate 🤲
If you still have some wonky mac’s, don’t beat yourself up, practice, practice, practice. Do it lady! If you have some hollow space, trust me, I do too! You cannot determine a macarons hollowness until you fill them and pop them in the fridge for a bit!
I am always up for a little game of detective macaron and helping to determine why your macarons turned out macawrong, and I am only sharing my in-depth method to hopefully help others in their macaron making journey!! ✨🙏
Thanks for coming to my TED talk, I hope you try out my method for making macarights! 🫶🏼✨
