Honey Lavender French Macaroons…. Why??… Because it’s officially Spring! And nothing says “Spring” like beautiful pastel violet french macaroons… or any pretty cookies for that matter!
This was my very first time trying my hand at these cookies. I was all sorts of nervous but I thought, “Hey if I’m going to be ‘self quarantining’ at home alone today I can just throw these away if they don’t turn out. That or give them to momma’s chickens as a treat.” 😉
So I gave it a whirl!
I’ve been wanting to use lavender in some sort of baking for a while now. I saw a beautiful lemon lavender pound cake inspired from Downton Abbey on Pinterest the other day so I knew I wasn’t going crazy!! It was possible to put amazing smelling flowers into baked goods! So I was going to try it!
Honey and lavender sounded like an amazing combination, as well as lavender with lemon. So I headed to Pinterest and started searching for a few minutes. That’s all it took and I was motivated!! Thank the Lord for Pinterest!!! It’s really helping all of us ‘creatives’ out there during this crazy time in our world… being artsy, creative and just trying new things out is sure helping to keep my mind off all the negative with the covid-19 talk.
So hopefully this recipe and these pictures of my first macaroon journey gets your mind off of it too and makes you happy, hungry for a sweet cookie and maybe motivated to try something new!
Like I said, I was pretty nervous to try these because french macaroons are supposedly a difficult thing to bake. You’ve got to get your measurements just right, let the cookies rest and dry out before baking for just the right time and make sure you don’t over mix the ingredients. No pressure.
My mom and I have watched hours… yes hours of one of our favorite shows, The Great British Bake Off, and oh, of course, it’s on Netflix… the temptations to sit there for hours! We’ve seen them make these darn good cookies plenty of times, and there are countless videos on Facebook and Pinterest, so I had to try! They are my favorite cookies anyway…
Let’s begin! Look at that pretty pastel violet!!!
I found about three different recipes that I wanted to try and I sort of combined the three. I compared the ratios, dry time and baking time and went for it! So here it is!
3 Large Egg Whites
1 Cup Almond Flour
1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar
1 & 1/2 Cup Powdered Sugar
1/4 tsp Cream of Tartar
1 tsp Vanilla
Cream Cheese Frosting (I used Betty Crocker)
Honey
Food Coloring (Gel)
Lavender Essential Oil
Ziplock baggies for piping
Metal Baking Sheets
Parchment Paper
Start by separating 3 egg whites and mix them with an electric mixer. After a few seconds, when you see the eggs begin to look frothy, slowly add in the cream of tartar. Next, add in your granulated sugar, about 1/3 of it at a time. Now you should definitely begin to see your egg white mixture foam up and grow in size. Soft peaks should be foaming, keep mixing! We are looking for stiff peaks here. How you test it is to simply turn the mixer off and pull the beaters out of the mixture, then see how the “peaks” look. If they suddenly fall back into the mixture they are too soft. We are looking for little cute mountains, firm peaks to stay standing up in the bowl.
Next, add in your vanilla and food coloring. I used gel, and just a tiny bit of it because a little goes a long way. I was going for a very light pastel color for this batch and it worked out great. But I did read that you want to put in more coloring than you think you will need, so if you want more vibrant colors just go for it!
Now sift your powdered sugar and almond flour together in a bowl and add about 1/3 of this mixture to the egg whites. Gently fold them in and repeat two more times until all of your mixture is incorporated. Be sure to fold gently, we don’t want to release too much of this air we just whipped into the eggs, but we do want to make sure we have it mixed well. Scrape the bowl and be sure to pull up from the bottom of the bowl too. Once you have it mixed just perfectly you should be able to hold it up with a spoon and if fall down like a stream, then try the “figure 8” test by swirling your spoon in a figure 8 position. The mixture should look like a ribbon forming.
Fill up a bigger sized plastic baggie and snip the corner a good size, but not too big, and you’re ready to pipe!
First, you will want to pipe down little dime-sized circles onto your metal baking sheets, then cut out parchment paper to align with the pan size and stick into place. Pipe little circles about 1 inch to 1 & 1/2 inches wide. After your first tray is complete begin to pick your tray up and whack it on your counter a few times, you’re trying to get any little air bubbles out of the cookies before a harder layer forms and the bubbles can’t release. Turn your pan around and give it a few more taps then proceed to your next tray. This recipe gave me 22 sandwiched cookies, so 44 on the sheets total. Two baking sheets.
Once you’ve filled both baking sheets and tapped the air out it’s time to let these cookies rest and “dry”. Recommendations were anywhere from 30-60 minutes. I decided to go for 60. At about 40 minutes you will notice if you lightly touch the tops of the cookies they are no longer shiny and sticky, they may even bounce back a little bit. Go the extra time to ensure you get the “feet” in your cookies. When I saw the feet forming while baking I was so excited. This is one of the hard things to get in these cookies, that and avoiding cracks on the top while baking… these all come by not letting them rest and dry long enough. So go the full 60 minutes! Trust me! At 60 minutes they have no shine to them and they are dry. Ready!!
Preheat your oven to 300 degrees and only bake one sheet at a time. The middle rack is the best. I baked mine for 7 minutes, rotated the sheet and baked another 7 minutes.
They. Were. Perfect. They had feet any everything! No cracks. They weren’t miss-shaped. They were just cute little cookies!
One note I will add about baking and some trial and errors I found out while doing this was don’t bake them on stoneware baking sheets. I did with the second sheet and I ended up baking them three times the length and in doing so I lost my pretty pastel color… At least I had one perfect sheet!! Picture worthy! 😉
When you can slightly lift up a cookie off of the parchment paper and it comes up whole and doesn’t stick, you’re ready. I didn’t have to use a spatula to get them up, they just came up nicely and I moved them to a cooling rack.
In the meantime, while the second sheet baked I started the frosting. Now, remember… we are in “quarantine mode”. Yes, you see a container of Betty Crocker premade frosting… I can just hear the great Paul Hollywood dissing me right now, but I do have a good reason. I was out of powdered sugar!! I’m just happy that my momma had this for me to use! Along with the food coloring and eggs! 😉 Yeah, I was unprepared! But I was motivated, so that’s what matters! Ha!
Anyways, proceed with the frosting… This is so simple and crazy. It worked out so good.
Add two drops of lavender essential oil to the container of frosting, attach one beater to the electric mixer and whip it up! It didn’t even make a mess and it mixed beautifully. I was thinking about adding some of the dye here but I did want contrast for the macaroons so I opted out.
Next, I added that frosting to a plastic baggie, cut the corner and worked on the honey. This honey came from my sister and her bees!! I love her honey so much! Makes me want to get some bees of my own someday… (says the girl who is deathly scared of them) but for today I’ll stay safe and sane and use hers! Melt about a table spoon, let it cool a bit and put in a baggie, cut the corner for a very small hole.
Now you’re ready to start pipping and assembling. Match up your cookies for tops and bottoms so that they size up nicely. Pipe a large cirlce of frosting around one side of the cookie and then pipe a small dollop of honey in the centers. Sandwhich both ends together and voila! You have the perfect little french macaroon! The frosting helps hold all the honey inside, that way nothing is sticky and making a mess. And believe me, a little honey goes a long way. The frosting as well. I’ve seen and had some macaroons where I feel like, “Where’s the cookie?” I’d say try using less than what you think you do need because these cookies are sweet on their own! But just go for it! Enjoy the process, yes it’s long but it’s so worth it!
My husband came home and started saying, “No… you didn’t make these. You bought these!” Well, I’m just going to take that as a compliment! 😉
The lovely lavender paired amazing with the honey! I can’t wait to see what other combinations we like!
And these macaroons freeze well too! I just have mine in a plastic storage container… I don’t know how long they will actually stay there, but it’s the thought right?
Have fun baking everyone!!
I hope you enjoyed this recipe and pictures of my fun macaroon trail! I’ll definitely be doing this again, of course with some sort of chocolate or coffee, or the combination!
Have fun! and take pictures/comment if you try this recipe out! I’d love to see your creations!
Stay positive and keep on living! 🙂
A. Bell