Macarons can totally be romantic right?! You bet! These babies were a labor of LOVE!!! These sweet treats make a perfect dessert or gift idea for this Valentine’s day- for your loved ones and friends! These are salted caramel metallic gold and silver macarons and I get it now why these crunchy, chewy, sweet, and savory treats can be so expensive. This photo was taken this morning after:
- two trips to Bed Bath & Beyond
- two trips to my local grocery store (in sweats and tear streaked cheeks)
- an impromptu trip to Target at 10PM
- a trip to Michael’s
- and dumping the entire first batch to start again from scratch at 11PM
Let me tell ya, if you’ve mastered the art of making macarons than you’ve mastered an art. Below is a recipe I got from two different places EatLiveTravelWrite and HowToCookThat blogs.
I’ve linked you to the two original recipes if you want to follow their method, HowToCookThat’s blog, saved me from breakdown number two! I won’t list the step by step here since she so adequately displays the ‘how to’s’ over there. Instead I’ll show you what I learned along the way to get these fluffy, chewy, and delicious macarons…..errr take two!
First sift your dry ingredients once twice….trust me on this. And set aside.
I took my egg whites out for about 2 hours before I whipped them into a fluffy mound. Just when you think it’s ready, it’s not…keep on whisking folks! It took me about 15 minutes by hand to achieve what 2 minutes of an electric mixer did.
I wanted a golden macaron to fit in with the theme of metallic salted caramel, so I mixed in 10 drops of yellow food coloring with 2 drops of red food coloring.
Then I added it into my dry ingredients and folded, press, turn….that’s the method. Fold, press, turn, repeat. Until your mixture flows like lava!
I piped my ‘rows’ of batter into an odd zig zag pattern for some reason, also they were huge like loving lil cookies, some even touching. They will spread so don’t over pipe them out like I did.
Allow them to rest on the counter for about 30 minutes after racking them to release air pockets. This is the time to set your oven to 300 degrees and sprinkle a bit of coarse salt on top of each of them.
Then pipe out some homemade Dulce de Leche in the centers and sandwhich with another macaron.
I also got inspired by my friend’s birthday macaroons that were bright gold, so I picked up some cake spray paint in metallic gold and silver and when the macaroons were set, I sprayed them down and above is what I got!
I took a ton of photos with them and then allowed my family to devour them, they were soooo delicious!!! They are chewy and fluffy, they’re delicious and delightful, try them out!
I love to bake but I’d give these a sold 7 in difficulty level haha. Try them out and tag me in your yummy posts! You can make them for events, holidays, and gifts! Happy love day to you and yours!!!
xoxo- Jess