French Macarons

Description

French Macarons are round, delicate, often brightly colored sandwich cookies. They are typically filled with a ganache, buttercream, or jam. The meringue cookies have a wonderfully chewy interior texture and a crisp shell. Well made macaron cookies should be perfectly round with a ruffled "skirt" along the edge where it has risen in the oven.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 300F degrees
  2. Beat egg whites until foamy, then add salt, cream of tartar and white sugar for 8-10 mins
  3. Whip until they form a peak that stands upright
  4. Optional: add food safe dye
  5. Sift almond flour, and powdered sugar. Any larger lumps that remain can be discarded You want a really fine powder mixture to create a smooth top to your cookie.
  6. Fold flour/sugar mixture into the egg white mixture. About 65-75 good strokes
  7. Transfer batter to a pastry bag.
  8. Pipe out 1 inch rounds on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
  9. Tap the pan hard at least 2-3 times to release the air bubbles. This will prevent the tops of your macaroons from cracking.
  10. Let them sit out for 20-30 mins, or up to an hour if you want. This will allow them time to dry out a bit before hitting the hot oven. They should be "tacky" to the touch, but not stick to your fingertips. This is another important step to assuring your macarons develop feet! When they dry out they can't spread out in the oven, and are forced to rise up. That's what creates the feet!
Source: Entertaining with Beth

Sample Images

Sample Recipe Pages

  1. Epicurious

    2. I thought Epicurious' landing page was lacking. But the interface after a search was made was much better. It had the most search filter options available. I liked that recipes had quick views, however, ocassionally I was inundated with articles when all I wanted was recipes. Recipes also began with brief descriptions. In my opinion ingredients need to be immediately visible.

  2. Bon Appetit

    3. I thought Bon Appetit had a more enticing landing page, I like the use of large scale graphics. The search results were on-par with Epicurious, and allowed you to filter by dietary concerns. I appreciated that recipes all began with ingredients, active time and yeild, rather than making the audience scroll through an article about the recipe. I liked that recipes had quick views, and that results could be filtered with lots of

  3. All recipes

    4. All Recipes likely had the worst landing page. Although I liked that you can immediately search by ingredient unlike the other two sites which require you making an initial search to apply filters. The recipe pages were well designed, with a photo gallery and active time immediately visible. Recipe amounts can be adjusted on-site to match desired yield.

Design Samples

  1. Vogue España 80's Fever

    2. I love how this webpage implements a horizontal scroll. I think it really enhances the material. Combined with the liberal use of whitespace I think this site has great communication techniques.

  2. Art Space Theory

    3. I found this site incredibly fascinating. I loved the use of a bold background color with white text. The combination of limited, small-scale images with lots of creative uses of text enhances the content of this page.

  3. Vitera

    4. I loved Vitera's landing page. I like that the audience immediately sees a full-scall image of the product being sold. Immediately beneath the image you are met with six uniquely designed icons depicting emotions. The site will provide you with a tea recommendation based on how you are feeling.