I saw these adorable macarons on Pies & Taco’s Instagram a few weeks ago and have just been waiting for the chance to make them. I was already making a Hot Cocoa Cake (stay tuned for that post this weekend!) and thought making these too would be a fun edition. After a more successful venture with macarons in December I’ve been wanting to get back in the kitchen to make these for practice.

I’ve just been using parchment paper for my macarons, but a friend ordered me several macaron silpats so I was very excited to use it for the first time. I ordered the egg white powder and dehydrated marshmallows online since the recipe calls for it and I hoped the egg white powder would help with a few of the issues I’ve had. Learning from my previous baking mishaps I went ahead and prepped everything beforehand and read over the instructions several times.

After doing some research from my previous macaron venture we wondered if the reason some of them were more hollow and cracked was because we should have folded the mixture together just a little longer after it made the “figure eight stage.” I loved the instructions Pies & Tacos gives here for doing the teaspoon test and felt that really helped me determine whether the mixture was ready for piping.

I also LOVED using these silpats as they made piping much more uniform and easy! It’s also possible that helped with the baking because they came out of the oven and loved beautiful. None of the tops were cracked and when I slowly peeled the maracons off later they had a nice foot and weren’t hollow. The only problem I ran into was for the small macarons I did as they ended up a little lopsided. I’ve been watching a lot of videos on how to pipe the macarons so there’s very little raised area and these look better but I’m still trying to master that technique.

The buttercream was easy to pull together so thankfully no issues there. The final stage was melting the chocolate and then adding the dehydrated marshmallows for decoration. I didn’t have the chocolate that was mentioned as being the best, so I consulted my husband who happens to have gone through training to become a chocolatier. He recommended using Ghirardelli (as opposed to just Nestle chocolate chips) and then doing a cheater version of tempering. I felt like it went okay but did have a little sugar bloom on the chocolate once it set. That’s honestly the only disappointing thing that happened, which considering this is only the third time I’ve made macarons I was thrilled! Not only did they look great, but they tasted great as well!

Certainly worth making, but be sure to check out all of the other macaron recipes on this website as well! My recommendation would definitely be to get macaron silpats if you’re planning on making maracons more than a few times and I think the dried egg whites did help as well so worth purchasing too.

Baking Ease	7
Time Spent	8
Taste	10
Visual	10

Recipe Used: Pies & Tacos