Chocolate French Macarons! [Recipe + Life Update]

College, Graduation, Spring, and Vacation Plannings, these past couple of months have really been lazily hectic. Although I am very excited and happy about life in general, I don't know If I will be ready for a huge change to come! College is right around the corner; I am currently in the middle of selecting "the one" from three possible options and I do not want to make a bad choice! I will for sure give an update once I am decided on my future~ Serious things aside, I am super delighted to feel the breezes of spring. Fashion, seasonal produce, and just the overall levity school has been feeling are all just some on the good things in life that I am very happy with.

Another thing that I have been especially pleased with was my macarons success! After buying a pound of almond meal for $10, I was determined to perfect the art of french macarons. All of you probably around know what french macarons are, but for those of you who do not, french macarons are meringue based cookies that are made of Almond flour and are common filled with buttercream, ganache, or jams.

However, attempts after attempts, I was not successful at creating these delicate treats! It is definitely a lot harder than it sounds in the recipe. But after four tries, I have finally mastered, well not quite, but finally created something that looks and tastes (I think, I've never actually had an actually macaron from a bakery) somewhat like a macaron!

Read more for the chocolate macaron recipe!

In the past I have tried to create chocolate macarons twice, and coffee macarons once. They all turned out to have very bumpy surfaces, cracks on the top, and messed up feet (the foamy looking thing). Something like this. 

(photo credit)

Or this.

(photo credit)

But I have finally achieved THIS. 

It was quite a journey, but all worth it. Now I just have to buy another ridiculously expensive bag of almond flour (Or I might consider making my own, which is basically grounding up almonds) and make all sorts of flavors! The following is the recipe I followed here. I will put tips and tricks in parenthesis! 

Chocolate Macarons

Recipe adapted from This Book (which spelt macarons wrong [the coconut kind])

 Ingredients:

3/4 cup Almond Flour (aka ground almonds, aka almond meal)

scant 1 cup confectioner's sugar (aka powdered sugar)

2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

2 large egg whites (at room temperature works best)

1/4 cup superfine sugar (regular granulated sugar also works, but not as well)

Ganache Filling:

3 1/2 oz of chopped semisweet chocolate

2/3 cup heavy cream

1. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper

(If you can) place the dry ingredients (almond flour, confectioners sugar, and cocoa) in a food processor and process for 15 seconds, stir the mixture.

(I did not do this. What I did was I placed these three ingredients into a sifter and I just sifted the ingredients together. It worked out the same. Just make sure that the mixture is as fine as you can get it to be.) 

2. Set dry ingredients aside. Place the egg whites in a bowl or a standing mixer and on medium high speed, whisk the egg whites until they form a peak (does not have to be very stiff). Continue whisking at a slightly lower speed while slowly adding in the superfine sugar. The ending result should be a some what firm and glossy with a thick cream like consistency.

3. Using a spatula, fold the dry ingredients slowly into the egg white mixture. Fold in 1/3 of the dry ingredients at a time. (DO NOT USE A STANDING MIXER TO DO THIS STEP) When it is completely incorporated into the egg white mixture, continued with the rest. The ending result should be a shiny and glossy batter which a somewhat thick ribbon like consistency. If you still have left over dry ingredients when you have reached this consistency, do not add it into the mixture. The mixture will thicken and become dough like!

4. Pour the batter into a piping bag with a 1/2 into plain round tip. (You can also just snip a tip off a plastic sandwich bag) Pipe round circles (the size of the circles determines how many cookies you will make!) Mine was around an inch and a half in diameter and were about an inch apart from one another. It should look something like this.  

(credit on image)

5. Tap the baking sheets onto a surface to remove air bubbles. Let stand at room temperature for more than 20 minutes! (I let mine set for 30) I found that this really solved the problem of them cracking and they remained their shape a lot better. Preheat oven to 325 degrees (F)

6. Bake these in preheated oven for around 10-15 minutes (depending on your oven, I baked mine for 15) Cool for 10 minutes then remove cookies on a cooling rack to cool completely.

7. While they are cooling, prepare the ganache filling. Of course you can basically fill them with whatever you want. (Nutella, regular vanilla buttercream, jams, whatever) but a chocolate ganache is tranditional for chocolate macarons. 

Basically heat the heavy cream in a sauce pan until just boiling. Place chocolate in a heat proof bowl and pour the heavy cream over the chocolate. Stir until smooth. Let cool for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally until thickened. 

(Mine did not turn out thick enough so I put mine in the fridge, which worked a lot faster)

Use to sandwich pairs of cookies together!  You can do this through piping, or just spoon the mixture on to the cookies, works just as fine. 

It is suggested to store these in the fridge over night before serving, but who can resist!

But yeah, these worked, finally! If they fail the first time you make them, DON'T WORRY! just try again! I got through an entire bag of almond flour before reaching to this state!

I am planning to make strawberries ones this weekend for a dinner party. Super excited.

Happy a nice week everyone! Enjoy life!

-Grace