I’ve been wanting to try macarons again since round one didn’t go as well as I had hoped. As I mentioned on that post, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with macarons as they’re a bit finicky. I made the others during summer and since we live in the Southeast region of the US it’s very probable a lot of my issues were humidity but I didn’t want to take any changes and decided to try another recipe.

Maybe it’s just because I had already made these once before, but I felt like this recipe was a lot easier to follow and less stressful. We did learn that if you use egg whites from the carton they won’t work properly. We could tell while whipping the eggs that it wasn’t setting up correctly so we dumped that and used actual eggs.

We felt like ours made it to the figure 8 stage and then piped them onto several cookie sheets to sit. You can let them sit on the counter from 30 minutes to an hour (we did an hour), but the most important factor is making sure the top is smooth and firm. Then we popped them into the oven for 17 minutes.

As you can see by the photo these look a million times better than round one, but this was a small fraction of the batch. The majority of these were puffy and cracked or were hollow which was really disappointing. My husband tried to keep reminding me that I’m not a french pastry chef so I shouldn’t expect perfection (even though I’m a perfectionist!). He made me watch this video from Adam Ragusea and if you’re worried about how yours turn out you should too. It’s possible ours turned out this way because we didn’t mix the egg whites and almond flour/powdered sugar mixture together too gently and didn’t incorporate enough air into the batter.

I also had issues with the filling, of which I used peppermint rather than rose water. My butter seemed to break and just looked really gross so I tossed that and started over. I kind of created my own version for filling and did about 2 Tablespoons of salted butter, 2 Tablespoons of Crisco, about 3/4 cup of powdered sugar, and then enough milk to get the consistency that I wanted. Then I added a few drops of peppermint extract so a little holiday cheer. This turned out a ton better than the butter only mixture and because it used Crisco it was more white than yellow which I felt was also more appealing.

Baking Ease	7
Time Spent	8
Taste	10
Visual	9*

Recipe Used: Joshua Weissman