French macaroons

Hey again,

French macaroons?...hmmmm

Guys this is just to share with you my experience with making the delicate cookies known as the french macaroons.
Lemme just start by saying I have tried to make these cookies four times but I failed every single time. My macaroons have never had the signature macaroon "feet", other times, they won't come off the baking sheet. I used four different recipes I got online for the four times I tried.
Although the first time I tried in 2014, I didn't know where to get almonds so I tried using peanuts instead, after mixing and piping (well I didn't really know what I was doing), the point is that the macaroons burned
although as usual my brothers found a way to eat some of them like that.
I felt they burned because I used peanuts so I said I wasn't  going to try them again until I could find almonds.

       Then middle of this year, I found almonds and I tried again, they baked okay tho none of them had feet, some came off, some didn't.. Anyways we ate them and they were delicious they just didn't look like macaroons.
Then I tried again a few weeks later, these were so messy, didn't come off at all , we literally had to scrape them off the baking sheet before we could taste them.

       The fourth time I tried, I had excess cornmeal on my hands so I decided to make macaroons out of that. They came off quite nicely but as usual "no feet" and the cornmeal was too hard.
Well my brothers cleared them tho they didn't like it. *nothing wastes in my house, especially if it has a lot of sugar in it.* Sorry I dont have pictures from any of these fails, I was always too disappointed to even take a picture and I never imagined I was ever going to need them for a blog.

     Anyways, I gave up on macaroon making until the 19th of September when a chef I follow on Instagram (Chef antonio bachour *bachour1234 in-case anybody wants to follow him on IG* ) who makes perfect macaroons all the time posted his macaroons recipe and I quicly screen-grabbed it. He had given me hope again but I decided to be patient this time around so I wont mess it up.
   So I Tried it yesterday, followed the recipe to the letter, tried not to mess anything up and when I opened my oven to take them out and I saw "the feet" I screamed. I was so excited, I started to thank God and chef antonio bachour even tho he couldn't hear me *but I know God could hear me.

I dont really have detailed pictures because I was focusing of how I was going to get them right this time.

According to the recipe, I started out by sifting 125grms of almond meal(i'm sure you guys can make that) together with 150grms of confetioners sugar(Icing sugar).

Almond meal and icing sugar

egg whites

 Then I scaled a hundred grams of egg whites, I got these from almost three medium sized eggs

 Next I whipped my egg whites until foamy, then added 100 grms of granulated sugar 2tbsps at a time
until medium peaks formed. Next i added a few drops of food coloring and mixed it all together.

meringue

 Next, add the sugar and almond meal mixture, then with a rubber spatula, fold everything together. Most recipes ask you to count because you don't want to over-mix or under-mix. The first recipe I tried said 30 folds, I also tried another that said 60-70 folds.
   Chef bachour's recipe didn't specify, it just said to fold everything until smooth and glossy. So I folded and folded until I got the texture below, I didn't count but if I were to guess I must have folded about a hundred times.
The mixture was smooth but not runny.

Like this

 

Here I preheated my oven to 140 degrees. Next I piped them on to a baking tray lined with a parchment paper and a piping bag fitted with half an inch round tip. *piping isn't that neat but you get the point* Let them rest for about 30 minutes to get a hard shell. Then I placed my baking tray on the bottom rack of my oven and I baked them for 6 minutes, the moved them to the top rack and baked for another 6 minutes.

voila... they came out with the feet. 

 When they completely cooled, I sandwiched two together with dark chocolate ganache that I already had in the freezer. you can fill them with all sorts of things e.g buttercream, jam.. whatever you feel like.

I am so so glad I finally got these french macaroons. Now I can move on knowing I know how to make french macaroons.