Red velvet macaron

Recipe

Red velvet macarons - Barley and sage

• I did not decorate with white chocolate, so I omitted that ingredient.

• I ended up using 6-8 drops of red gel food colouring.

• They had to bake closer to 15-16 minutes in my oven.

How it turned out

I'm usually very critical of my baking, but this was truly near perfection. Aside from a few aesthetic things I'd like to work on (piping the right size and popping bubbles without causing craters) the flavours and structure were really really spot on. I mean, check out these feet!

I'm very proud that this turned out so well on my first go. I'm excited to bake these again and to experiment with different flavours.

What I learned

Prepare, prepare, prepare. I completely credit preparation for the success of my first macaron bake. I watched multiple videos to understand the macaronage technique, the importance of letting a skin form on the top before baking, and how bad large air bubbles are for the cookie.

These were my three favourite macaron videos to help me prepare:

• Claire Saffitz via the NYT

• Preppy Kitchen

• Bake it up a notch

Popping bubbles can do more harm than good. While small air bubbles are part of the macaron's structure, the large ones can expand and cause large cracks and craters in the shells. So, it's important to pop any large bubbles with a toothpick after you pipe them.

But do it quickly! If the shell starts to form a skin, the bubbles you pop may not fill in — leaving you with dents in what should be a perfectly smooth shell.

Filling possibilities are endless. I went into this thinking a macaron was made from a very specific shell recipe (it is) with a very specific filling (it isn't). The filling truly is completely up to you. The nice thing is — whether it's jam, ganache, buttercream, nutella, or curd — they are all fillings that can be prepped well ahead (and in some cases even frozen for months). When the filling is already made, it makes the macaron-making process far less daunting.

This one is filled with a cream cheese frosting.

Pipe smaller circles than you think. I crafted a template to fit my two large baking sheets via Southern Fatty's 8.5x11 printable template. This was very helpful because it took the guesswork out of positioning. At first I piped only to the inner circle but thought they looked too small, so I started filling the outer circle. As the cookie rested, it spread a bit wider (in some cases even touching its neighbour). Next time I'll stick to my original plan and pipe a small 1" wide circle.