French Almond Macarons 2

Success! Well, for the most part. I forgot to take pictures of the finished product, so I have no true proof other than happy friends, but let's just say I got as excited as Veronica when my macarons developed their "feet". Here's the only picture I have:


This time I used the same recipe that she used that can be found here.
- 1 ¼ cups icing sugar
- 4 oz (1 cup) almond flour or finely ground almonds
- ¼ cup plus 2 tbsps egg whites at room temperature
- pinch of salt
- ¼ cup granulated sugar

Interestingly, this recipe has less almond meal and maybe less egg. Hard to say: 1/4 c + 2 T v. 3 egg whites. I guess it depends on the eggs.

I quadrupled the recipe, using almond meal from Trader Joes ($3.99 for 16oz)! Who knew? Thanks to my friend/neighbor Diego for that hot tip. It was actually finer than the meal I bought at Whole Foods made by Bob's Redmill ($9.99 for 16oz). I called Rainbow to check if they had it and they do in bulk, so that's an option too.

I let the eggs sit out (covered since we have fruit flies, ewww) for over 48 hours. They were hard to scoop and measure, so I think I had a little less than the recipe called for.

I split the finished batter in half and put pink color in one and yellow in the other. I tested the letting them sit once piped trick and it worked. At first I thought it was the fact that I was using two different pans (one double insulated and the other just your basic cookie sheet). Once I let them both rest, both pans produced equally feet-y cookies.

I used Martha's Swiss Meringue Buttercream recipe.

• 4 large egg whites
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cups unsalted butter, (3 sticks), softened, cut into tablespoons

Whisk whites until stiff, slowly adding sugar until forms stiff peaks.
Switch to paddle and slowly add the softened butter.
At this point I divided the frosting into two and added pink food coloring gel and rose water (about 3 tsp) to one and yellow food coloing gel and some safron honey from Italy to the other. I piped the pink into the pink cookies and the yellow into the yellow.

They were so cute and so delicious! I love anything rose or violet flavored, so this little trend will likely continue.