Who doesn’t love a Macaron? What I don’t love is having to pay $3 for one of those suckers at a bakery. While pregnant I would dream about Macarons, and since our budget would not allow me to spend $15 a day on the delicious bites of heaven, I decided to attempt to make some. I have heard that these cookies are the most temperamental of all the cookies and was a little hesitant. After a few trial and error rounds I found a way to make these addicting cookies with little to no stress- Seriously!

To begin, you will need a kitchen scale as the recipe goes by the weight of the ingredients. Gather all of your ingredients together and let the fun begin!

HELPFUL FACT: Make sure to weigh the measuring cup (or bowl) before measuring out ingredients. As shown below, my measuring cup weighs 290 grams, so I will add the amount of an ingredient I need to that for the total weight I need.

Measure out the 115 grams almond flour first.

Then add 230 grams of confectioner’s sugar (in a lot of recipes it is called ‘icing sugar’) and whisk together to get rid of any lumps and bumps.

Next whisk up 5 egg whites together until fluffy and stiff.

I placed a few drops of green food coloring as well as a pinch of salt and 1 tsp of vanilla (you can add any other flavor extracts you would like right now) into the egg whites when they were just about done to add some color. Once the eggs are good, slowly start adding the almond flour/confectioner’s sugar mixture and fold into egg whites.

Now this is the point where having a handy, dandy contraption helps with taking the stress out of these cookies.  I purchased a macaron kit through Amazon HERE.  This silicone mat and piping pot made all the difference in executing and baking these treats.

Add some of the batter gently to the piping pot and close.

Place the silicone mat on a baking sheet.

The silicone mat has circles to fill that create the perfect size macaron. Squeeze the batter into the circles. This tip is key: use every other area-this lets the macarons cook and cool much better and easier than if the sheet is full- believe me I know 🙂

Place in a heated 300° oven for 15 minutes. DO not open to peek or turn the oven light on (not sure why my oven light makes such a difference, but it does). Immediately take out of oven and place baking sheet on cooling rack for at least 30 minutes. I know it will be so tempting to touch or peek to see if they are done-DON’T DO IT! If you leave them be, they will completely  peel off each time.

Another reason the silicone mat is the bomb is because it’s pliable and you can remove it from the cookies instead of removing the cookies from it…..it’s bendy!

I then put the cookies on the cooling rack directly and get the filling ready. There are so many options for fillings, but I am a big fan of this Raspberry Frosting for these macarons.

Then gently pipe on some of the frosting to the flat side of the cookie and sandwich another cookie on top. Granted, this might not be the best looking macarons, but I would rather have no stress/uglyish cookie than a stress filled beautiful cookie.

Hope you enjoy these cookies just as me and my pregnant self did!