French Macaron Recipe for Your First Time Making Them (pictures included)

La Macaronicité 3: the more reliable macaron recipe and a few tips Macaroniers, Macaronistes et Macaroneurs, So you want to make better macarons? Welcome to the third instalment of La Macaronicité at Syrup & Tang! If you missed the introduction, click here to read it. And if you want to learn about basic technique, ingredients and method, visit the second article. Making French Macarons: Instructions & Recipes It seems like there’s a wave of macaron questions that are sweeping my way. Unlike les brownies or le gâteau weekend (poundcake), successful macarons are more the result of the technique, rather than following a mere recipe. There’s lots of tips and tricks around the web that will help you out with these little devils, including some interesting recipes, too. You can find my chocolate macaron recipe on the site, but here are a few links and places for further reading that I think are particularly helpful and insightful. Websites and Blogs

Macaron Mythbusters As I wrote in my first macaron post, I make macarons every day at work, learning something new with each batch. The most important thing I’ve learned is this: Macarons don’t have magical properties and shouldn’t require quasi-spiritual rituals as part of their mise en place. You wouldn’t learn that from reading up on macaron-themed blog posts, though. Instead you’ll find bakers fervently insisting on an assortment of essential steps to prevent failure, while simultaneously conceding failure as both inevitable and incomprehensible. Everyone harps upon their fickle nature, making half-joking references to spiteful macaron gods. Macarons A lot of people get the wrong impression about macarons and avoid making them because they’re supposedly the most difficult thing in the world to make. Truly, they’re not difficult at all. What is difficult is mastering them. For some reason people mistakenly think if something can’t be mastered on the first try, it’s too hard to fool with. But there’s no reason to master macarons on the first try.

The Ten Commandments Recently, I’ve gotten to know fellow Kentuckian Victor Sizemore. While his photography business has him in Los Angeles most weekends, Monday through Friday he’s a Lexingtonian and (convenient to my purposes) a consummate foodie. He bought my desserts-for-photos pyramid scheme hook, line and sinker. When I sent him a text along the lines of, “hey, if you want to turn a box of pastries into photography, let me know!” I thought maybe we’d get together the next week or something. But he wrote back, “on my way.”