Sweet on French Macarons

French mac­arons con­tin­ue to be a huge trend in the food and par­ty indus­tries and I myself can­not get enough of them! I mean, come on… it is French after all! I do admit that I am a bit intim­i­dat­ed and hes­i­tant to make them, but luck­i­ly, I have a secret weapon: the newest book, Gourmet French Mac­arons, writ­ten and pho­tographed by my incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed friend, Mindy Cone of Cre­ative Juice! I’m so excit­ed and am now ready to take on this new bak­ing adventure!

Though the mac­aron is not a new con­fec­tion, Mindy puts a unique and cre­ative spin on this clas­sic French cook­ie by offer­ing recipes, tech­niques, tem­plates and dec­o­rat­ing tips to give them a mod­ern and whim­si­cal makeover! With over 75 designs and fill­ings, Mindy shows you how to trans­form mac­arons to fit any hol­i­day, sea­son or life cel­e­bra­tion with the most adorable shapes!

To hear about the book in her own words, watch Mindy’s adorable and infor­ma­tive video trailer:

Gourmet French Mac­arons from TK Pro­duc­tions on Vimeo

Scroll down to see some of the charm­ing and sweet designs offered in the book, as well as Mindy’s recipe and instruc­tions for Choco­late French Mac­arons! And just as you can hard­ly con­tain your excite­ment to start cre­at­ing your own, be sure to enter the GIVEAWAY to win a copy of your own!

MINDY’S CHOCOLATE FRENCH MACARONS RECIPE

{get your free 1.5‑inch cir­cle tem­plate down­load for this recipe here}

Choco­late French Macarons

• 100g of egg whites aged at room temperature
• Pinch of Cream of tartar
• 35g of superfine sugar
• 110g of Almond flour
• 200g of Pow­dered Sugar
• 10g cocoa powder

1. Mea­sure out all ingre­di­ents using a gram scale

2. Pre­pare the bak­ing sheets by lin­ing them with a sil­i­cone mat or parch­ment paper. Slide a print­ed 1 ½ inch tem­plate sheet under­neath and set aside. Pre­pare pip­ing bag to be filled and set aside.

3. Sift pow­dered sug­ar, almond mix­ture, and cocoa pow­der togeth­er two or three times through a sieve and set aside.

4. Place the egg whites in a large bowl or in stand mix­er with wire whisk attach­ment. Whisk on low until egg whites become foamy. Add the pinch of cream of tar­tar. Con­tin­ue to whisk until soft peaks form. Slow­ly add in the superfine sug­ar. Once all of the sug­ar is incor­po­rat­ed, scrape down the sides with a spatula.

5. Turn your mix­er on medi­um-high and con­tin­ue to whisk until you reach a stiff meringue. If adding liq­uid or gel food dye, do so toward the end of whisking.

6. Sift 1/3 of the almond flour, pow­dered sug­ar, and cocoa pow­der mix­ture through the sieve and into the meringue. Fold the dry mix­ture into the meringue. Repeat with the remain­ing mix­ture. Once all of the dry ingre­di­ents are incor­po­rat­ed, the bat­ter will be thick and have a dull shine. Con­tin­ue to fold. As you do so, the bat­ter will loosen. Stop fold­ing when the bat­ter has a glossy sheen, a “lava-like” con­sis­ten­cy, and falls in a rib­bon like man­ner off the spatula.

7. Trans­fer the bat­ter into a large pas­try bag fit­ted with a round tip and pipe 1½ inch rounds on the parch­ment paper fol­low­ing the template.

8. When all of the rounds are piped on the parch­ment, rap the sheet pans even­ly on work sur­face a few times. Remove tem­plates from below your parch­ment paper care­ful­ly. Let the bat­ter rest at room tem­per­a­ture for 20–40 minutes.

9. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Reduce tem­per­a­ture to 300 degrees and bake one sheet at a time for 12 min­utes rotat­ing the pan half way through.

10.  Remove from oven and allow to cool.

11.  Match up sim­i­lar size shells into pairs and sand­wich with filling.

MAKES:

About 4 dozen 1.5 in shells (two dozen sand­wiched mac­aron cookies)

Choco­late Ganache Filling 

• 100 g (3.5 oz) chocolate*
• 1½ Tbsp. heavy cream

Place choco­late in a heat proof bowl.

Boil cream and pour over chocolate.

Stir until all the choco­late has melt­ed and tex­ture is smooth**

When warm, pipe onto mac­aron shells.

*It is pre­ferred to use the mini choco­late chips when pos­si­ble to speed up the process.

** If the cream is not able to melt all the choco­late, place bowl in microwave. Heat for 20 sec­onds on low pow­er. Remove and stir. Repeat until choco­late is ful­ly melted.

Deli­cious and mouth-water­ing, right?! Are you ready to make your own mac­arons?! Here’s your chance to win a copy of the book by enter­ing below via Raf­fle­copter! {US only}

a Raf­fle­copter giveaway

Merci Beaucoup!

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