Name: Macaron (Almond Meringue Sandwich)
Prep time: 50 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 1 h 5 min
Yield: 15 servings
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 100 g ground almonds; 100 g icing sugar; 80 g egg whites; 80 g caster sugar; 1 pinch salt; 1 tsp gel or powder food colouring; 100 g unsalted butter; 60 g icing sugar; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 100 g dark chocolate; 70 ml double cream

Ingredients

15servings

Shells (makes about 15, i.e. 30 shells)
ground almonds · blanched and finely ground; sift it, always100 g
icing sugar · the same weight as the almonds; sift them together100 g
egg whites · from 2–3 large eggs, at room temperature, with no trace of yolk80 g
caster sugar · added in three goes80 g
salt1 pinch
gel or powder food colouring · liquid colouring adds water and slackens the batter1 tsp
Filling — buttercream
unsalted butter · fully softened at room temperature100 g
icing sugar60 g
vanilla extract1 tsp
Filling — ganache (alternative)
dark chocolate · 55–70% cocoa100 g
double cream70 ml

Steps

Sift the ground almonds and icing sugar together, twice. Discard whatever stays in the sieve rather than pushing it through: those coarse grains end up as bumps on the shells.
Whisk the room-temperature whites with the salt in a grease-free bowl. Once foamy, add the caster sugar in three goes, whisking to stiff peaks that do not flop over when you lift the whisk. Add the colouring at the end of this stage.
⏲ 7 min
Fold the dry mix in in two or three additions, then start the macaronage: press the batter against the side of the bowl with the spatula to knock air deliberately back out. The move every other batter tells you to avoid is the whole technique here.
Judge it by how it flows. Lifted on the spatula the batter should fall in an unbroken ribbon, and a figure-8 drawn on the surface should sink back in about 10 seconds. If the trail stays, keep going; if it vanishes the instant you draw it, you have gone too far — and over-mixed batter cannot be rescued.
Pipe 3cm rounds through a 1cm plain nozzle onto baking paper, spaced 3cm apart. Rap the tray on the worktop two or three times to release big bubbles and pop any survivors with a toothpick.
Leave them at room temperature to dry the surface. They are ready when a fingertip pressed lightly on top comes away clean. 20–40 minutes is usual, but the touch is the test, not the clock. On a humid day they may not dry in an hour, so put a fan on low to move the air.
⏲ 30 min
Bake at 150°C for 13–15 minutes, turning the tray front to back at about 8 minutes. Because the dried skin cannot rise, the batter is pushed sideways and down instead and forms the ruffled foot at the base. Too hot and the tops crack; too cool and you get no foot and a hollow shell.
⏲ 14 min
Let them cool completely on the tray before lifting them. Peeled off warm, the bases stay behind on the paper.
⏲ 20 min
Beat the butter smooth, then whip in the icing sugar and vanilla until pale. For ganache instead, pour the warmed cream over the chocolate, stir smooth, and let it cool to a pipeable thickness.
⏲ 5 min
Pair the shells by size, pipe filling onto one and press the other on gently — only until the filling reaches the edge.
Box them airtight and mature them in the fridge for 24 hours. Over that time moisture moves out of the filling into the inside of the shells, which is what gives you a crisp outside and a chewy centre. A macaron eaten the day it is baked is just a dry meringue biscuit; the day of waiting is the texture.

Tips & Variations

Variations

Italian meringue: boil the caster sugar with 25g water to 118°C and pour the syrup slowly into the whisking whites. The meringue is far more stable and forgives a heavy hand at the macaronage, which is why shops work this way. The only real cost is needing a thermometer.
Tteung-caron: the Korean style, filled two or three times as thick. Keep the shell recipe and only pipe more filling, cutting the sweetness with cream cheese or sweet bean paste. Pipe the shells slightly larger (4cm) so they can carry the weight.
Chocolate: replace 10g of the 100g of ground almonds with unsweetened cocoa. Go further and you lose almond fat, which leaves the shells stiff.
Other fillings: jam is wet enough to sog the shells quickly, so pipe a ring of ganache or buttercream and fill only the middle with jam.
A macaroon is a different biscuit. The coconut kind uses no almond meringue shell, has no foot and is not sandwiched. The names are all they share.

Tips

Weigh everything. This is a ratio biscuit — equal weights of ground almonds and icing sugar — and cups do not hold that ratio. Nothing here can be eyeballed.
No liquid colouring. The added water moves the goalposts on the macaronage test. Use gel or powder, and go a shade darker than you want since colour fades in the oven.
The macaronage is the whole biscuit. Under-mixed batter keeps peaks and cracks; over-mixed spreads and grows no foot. Do the figure-8 test every time and, when in doubt, stop on the under-mixed side — a few more presses will fix that, while over-mixed batter goes in the bin.
The dried skin is what makes the foot. A shell that goes in wet has nowhere to expand but upwards, so it splits. That makes humidity the real variable in this recipe, and it is why the rainy season is when it goes wrong.
Hollow shells usually come from one of three things: too much macaronage, an oven too hot at the start, or underbaking. A set top over an unset middle collapses inwards as it cools and leaves the gap.
Check the oven rather than trusting it. 150°C is low enough that being 20°C over shows up immediately as cracked tops (what your oven is doing).
Ageing the whites for days rests on weak evidence. What actually matters is a grease-free bowl and whisk, whites at room temperature, and no yolk: fat collapses the foam outright (cooking eggs).
Do not cut the sugar. Here it is structure, not sweetness — it binds to the white's proteins and holds the foam up, so less of it means a meringue that sinks (what sugar does).
Same meringue as a pavlova, opposite goal. A pavlova is baked long and low to set only its surface and keep a marshmallow centre. A macaron shell is meant to dry and set through so the foot can stand. From the same two ingredients, the temperature and time go in opposite directions.
Do not skip the 24-hour maturation. It is the step most often left out and the one that makes the biggest difference.
Keeping them: airtight in the fridge for 5 days. Unfilled shells freeze for a month and can be sandwiched on demand, and finished macarons freeze too. Left out at room temperature the shells drink the filling and go soft.

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