French Macarons

Instructions

1. First, make sure to measure each ingredient precisely. Never guess or eyeball it. These are French desserts, and you all know how seriously they take their cuisine! Measure each ingredient in its own bowl and set it aside.
2. Food process your almonds with half of the powdered sugar to keep your almonds from turning to butter. Sift into a clean metal bowl and then process again. Sift one last time and set aside.
3. Beat your eggs in a clean metal bowl until soft peaks form. Add in salt and cream of tartar and continue beating. Add bakers’ sugar in a thin stream while constantly beating until you have a glossy meringue that keeps its form when you tip your bowl. Theoretically, you should be able to hold the bowl upside down over your head, and it shouldn’t budge. If you are beating and beating and the meringue doesn’t thicken, go ahead and try your hand mixer in short bursts. Don’t over mix though, mix until just thick enough and stop.
4. Add 1/3 of the prepared almond mixture to your meringue and fold until just incorporated. Add in another third and follow suit. Add in the last third and fold until just incorporated, and then stop. This is so important. Count your folds–you should fold no more than 40-ish times. If you reach 50, something might go wrong.
5. Put your batter into a piping bag and start piping onto parchment paper or Silpat. 
6. Pipe all of your batter onto cookie sheets and bang your pans flat down on your countertop. You will see the batter spread slightly and the air bubble surfacing. Turn your pans and bang again. Keep rotating and banging until there is no more air bubbles surface. 
7. Preheat your oven to 330 degrees Fahrenheit and let your macarons sit out in a cool, dry place for 30 minutes. The shells need to harden until they are no longer wet or sticky; you should be able to gently touch the tops with your finger without moving them.
8. Place one sheet at a time in the lower third of your oven for 7 minutes. After 7 minutes, rotate your pan 180 degrees and bake for 4 more minutes. Pull out the macarons when the tops are hard, and you can almost pull one of the cookie sheets before they start to brown. Grab them out of the oven but let them sit on the warm cookie sheet for another 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, you should be able to remove them flawlessly from the pan to cool on trays.
9. After cooled, match up macarons by shape and fill with cream or custard or jam. Whatever you’d like! Then put into an airtight container and let sit in the fridge overnight. Come morning; you will have perfectly chewy, delightfully flavorful macarons.