Macarons are amazing: delicious, fancy, French. But any home pastry chef knows just how notoriously hard they are to make. Yet there’s no reason why your macarons can’t turn out perfect the very first time you try to make them. As long as you carefully follow the recipe—and these three tips—your macarons will turn out picture-perfect.
Get Your Dry Ingredients Super Fine
Most macaron recipes will tell you to sift your dry ingredients so they get as fine as possible, which helps your macaron shells come out smooth instead of lumpy. To make sure things get super duper fine, you can even pulse them in a food processor.
Do the Figure 8 Test
One of the most sensitive parts of making macarons is not over-mixing the batter so you don’t accidentally end up with deflated cookies. But how can you tell if your batter is mixed enough to pipe? That’s where the figure eight test comes in. Try drawing a figure eight in your batter bowl with the batter flowing off of your spatula. If you can complete the entire eight, the batter has been mixed long enough. If not, keep mixing.
Tap Your Baking Sheet to Remove Air Bubbles
It may be a bit nerve-racking, but one of the last steps before you bake your macaron shells is to tap the baking sheet on a hard surface a few times. This flattens out the shells, removes air bubbles, and assures your macarons will come out shaped perfectly.
