Raspberry Rose Buttercream Macarons

During my latest baking adventure, my friend Christy and I tried our hand at French macarons for the very first time. After I made them a few people asked if there is a difference between coconut macaroons and French macarons . Yes, there is! The French ones are colorful, chewy, delightful, and uber trendy in the Pinterest-loving female crowd these days; the coconut ones involve lots of coconut flakes and a spiky finished product.

I found a recipe for French Macarons with Raspberry Rose Buttercream on my favorite cooking site, epicurious.com. It is a fabulous site with lots and lots of very sophisticated recipes, beautiful photos, and helpful reviews. 

(What's even more fabulous is borrowing your boyfriend's iPad during a Saturday afternoon baking session and suspending it from the kitchen cabinet. I felt super pro. If you have an iPad and don't have this awesome Gorilla Yogi Case for it with the grippy-legs, I recommend buying it STAT. The case lets you hang the iPad from anywhere and watch movies, page through recipes, FaceTime, whatever!)

The first step was to prep the sugar/egg "dough" for the cookies. Christy did that while I prepared the raspberry jam. The dough was surprisingly liquid and needed to be piped onto the cookie sheets. The piping helps you to create perfect little circles. 


   Little notes for next time: 

• DYE DILEMMA: If I could go back I would've added pink or red dye to the cookie batter so the final product was a little more fancy and pretty. After baking they ended up coming out golden brown, which was not so ooh-la-la Frenchy and beautiful.
• SIZE MATTERS: We also made the cookies too large. They could've been closer to 1 or 2" in diameter, instead of 4" in diameter. There was such an amazing taste explosion that occurred while eating them, we could've made more smaller cookies and spread the love more efficiently. 

When the raspberries and sugar were done simmering together, I separated the seeds from the syrup. Then we whipped the buttercream together and added some of the seedless raspberry syrup. Meanwhile, the cookies were in the oven baking...

When the cookies were finished baking and had cooled, I took the baked little meringue circles and assembled them with the seed-portion of the raspberry jam. 


Next Christy put the buttercream into a pastry bag with a 1/4" pastry tip on the end. She used this to apply the buttercream in an even way to each of the little cookies. This makes for a uniform little macaron cookie-sandwich.


    Note for next time:

• I think it might've been easier to use a 1/2" pastry tip. The 1/4" seemed small and it seemed to take forever!

The final step was to take my raspberry side and Christy's buttercream side and match them together. The finished product was EXCELLENT tasting (seriously, amazing). I was slightly disappointed that our version wasn't as beautiful as typical French macarons. Now we know what to do to step up our game for round 2!


Have you ever made macarons? What was your experience like?