I love Floral Frosting‘s macaron recipes. I may have said this before. Here is my version of them in my characteristic over-explanatory fashion.  Note that the start of them are the same steps in creating the best marshmallow fluff (previous post).

Vegan Matcha Macarons

Meringue
3/4 cup aquafaba (liquid drained from one can of chickpeas)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Dry
1 cup almond flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 TB matcha powder

Chocolate Center
1/4 cup cacao butter
1/4 cup coconut oil
1/2 cacao powder
3 TB maple syrup

Step 1: Make the Merigue (marshmallow fluff)
a) Reducing in cooking means cooking out the water to thicken and enhance flavor. Reducing aquafaba gets it to the consistency of egg whites. Drain the aquafaba directly into a glass measuring cup. It should be about 3/4 cup. Pour the aquafaba into a small saucepan and keep the measuring cup next to the stovetop. Simmer over a medium heat until it has reduced to 1/3 cup. I poured the simmering aquafaba in the measuring cup several times after a good 5 minutes of boiling. Once it was 1/3 cup, remove from the heat and leave to cool for 10 minutes.

b) Pour the reduced aquafaba into the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Whisk on high speed until soft peaks form, stopping to scrape down the sides once or twice but not neurotically as I sometimes do. Add 1/4 cup of the sugar and the vanilla and whisk until well combined. Then add the rest of the sugar and whisk at high speed until it is glossy and thick like marshmallow fluff.  Set aside while you prepare the dry.

Step 2: Incorporate The Dry
a) Whisk the almond flour, powdered sugar and the matcha powder in a bowl until well combined.  If you ground almonds in the food processor to make your almond flour, sieve the mixture and discard any large nut pieces. No big nuts, please!  These are dainty treats.

b) Pour half the dry mixture into the meringue and use a rubber spatula to mix the ingredients together, pressing the dry ingredients down into the meringue until everything is incorporated well. Add the remaining dry mixture and fold into the batter until well incorporated.

Step 3: “Macaronage”
a) Macaronage is a verb.  It is a process of macaron batter manipulation with the goal of achieving shells that are not hollow.  It did not make sense to me until I watch a video (this one does the trick) which details the entire process.  Somewhat counter-intuitively, you must work the batter, assertively incorporating the dry ingredients into the meringue.  Now that I have seen it and after doing what I thought to be “macaronage,” I am eager to try another batch of macarons again when I have hours to kill.  And I thought I was helping my macarons by being delicate and not deflating the meringue. Silly fool I was!  We will see the textural pitfall of not doing this step properly later in my post.

b) So you read about it and watched the video. Now, do what it tells you.

Step 4: Pipe & Wait
a) Spoon batter into a piping bag fitted with a plain round tip.  Pipe them straight down onto a parchment covered baking sheet like you’re holding a jackhammer.  Try to make them the same size.  If you accidentally make a weird one, make another weird one so it can be its sandwich partner. They won’t expand so they can be relatively close to each other. When you’re done drop the baking sheet onto the counter a couple of times to get rid of air bubbles and a little bit of your pent up aggression.

b) Let them sit for 2-3 hours at room temperature. I know, that’s a long time! I ran the dishwasher while I waited and watched a few episodes of Game of Thrones.

Step 5: Little Feet, Little Feet (Pied)
a) After the 2-3 hours, place the baking tray into a cold oven, as in not preheated. Set it for 212 F (which is 100 C) and bake the macarons for 20-25 minutes. To check if they’re ready, gently lift up a shell to see if they easily lift off the parchment. If they do, turn your oven off and go to the next step! If they are not coming off the parchment easily, bake them a few minutes more and then check again.

b) So you turned the oven off, now let them sit in there for 15 minutes, undisturbed with the oven door closed.

c) Next, open the oven door and leave them to cool inside the oven for another 15 minutes.

d) Remove them from the oven and let them to cool completely on the baking sheet. 

Here are the shells that were not properly macaronaged. Luckily macarons are a bit forgiving on the presentation front. Because you sandwich them up.  My macarons were mostly hollow but the exterior shells were perfect, giving them their characteristic bite.

Step 6: Chocolate On the Inside
a) This is my own chocolate recipe (see this post here). I wanted potent chocolate flavor that would dry with a thin chocolate bar bite. I put the cacao butter and solid coconut oil in a double boiler and mixed in the cacao powder and maple syrup in after all was melted.

b) After it cooled and thickened quite a bit, I spooned it into a small piping bag with a plain round tip. Pipe small blobs of chocolate in the center of half of the macaron shells.  Cap these shells with the unpiped ones and let them set in the refrigerator. 

And you’re done!  Find a pretty plate and have a quick photo shoot.