How to make the perfect peanut butter macaron

I was delighted with my first attempt at peanut butter macarons, so I'm being very bold and calling them 'perfect'.

A perfect macaron should have two crisp, shiny circular biscuits that are smooth on top and have a bubbly, risen 'foot' at their lower edge, sandwiched with a smooth cream.
















Macarons should be a triumph of both flavour and texture: Flavour should be delicate and the sweetness of the biscuit should be balanced by the smooth, creamy filling. The crisp and crunchy surface of the biscuit should also be balanced texturally by a chewy centre in the biscuit and the silky texture of the buttercream.












I have made chocolate, rose, coffee and pistachio macarons before, but until now I had never been adventurous enough to try a peanut butter flavour. It worked beautifully.

The links above give you lots of tips and trick, but since it's been a while, I am going to run through all the steps.

Firstly, the ingredients:

Macarons: 

200g ground almonds
200g icing sugar
160ml egg whites, divided equally into two lots of 80g
200g caster sugar
75 ml water

Buttercream: 

100g softened butter
100g smooth peanut butter
100g icing sugar
2 tblsp milk

To make the macarons, start off by tipping the ground almonds and the icing sugar into a food processor and blitz it for about a minute - you want it to be very, very fine. Then sieve this mixture into a bowl and set aside.

Place the caster sugar and the water into a small saucepan and, without stirring, boil the mixture until it starts to thicken into a syrup, You can see this stage taking plac when  the texture changes, the mixture becomes thick and syrupy, and the bubbles become slow and sticky.

As the syrup boils and starts to thicken (it will take five minutes or so), beat 80g of the egg whites to hard peak. When the eggs are at hard peak and the sugar syrup is thickened but not coloured, pour the syrup into the egg whites in a thin stream, beating constantly. Continue beating for a few minutes while the mixture cools down a little.

Mix the other 80g of egg whites into the ground almonds and icing sugar mix. Beat until combined, then add any flavourings.

For this recipe, I put in a capful of Café Trablit, a French coffee flavouring, because I thought this would go well with the peanut butter flavour, but you could use vanilla essence or not add any flavouring at all.

Tip a quarter of the meringue into the almond and sugar paste and stir briskly to lighten and thin this mixture. Then gently fold the other three quarters of the meringue into the mixture with a spatula. Take care not to over stir.

Scrape the mixture into a piping bag (I use disposable plastic piping bags, but you could use a sandwich bag with one corner snipped off).

Holding the bag vertically with the point downwards, pipe even circles onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper. Do this by squeezing the bag firmly straight downwards and allow the mixture to spread outwards from the middle.

Try to keep a bit of distance between each macaron. These are slightly too close together, and some of them swelled and ended up joined. It's annoying when this happens, because it can really affect the look of the macarons.

I had a mini-whoopie pie pan that I wanted to try for macarons. I thought the size of the indentations was about right, so I thought it was worth a try. Unfortunately, it didn't work - I'll show you the results below.

After piping all your mixture out, DO NOT put the tins in the oven!! Leave them to set and form a 'skin' at room temperature for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, turn the oven on to 150C to heat up.

....And you may wish to start on the clean-up.

Yes, this is the state in which my hand, the piping bag and the bench ended up after piping the mixture out.

This is a close up of the bench. And no, I don't really know how so much mess is even possible.

Do I remember piping a macaron straight onto the bench top? No, I do not. Nevertheless here it is.

Annnnd these are the stacks of dishes.

Suffice to say, by the time you have cleared up, it will be just about time to put the macarons in the oven.

Put them in the oven for 14 minutes. At the end, the macarons should be 'risen' with the tops glossy and hard, and the 'feet' sitting a few millimetres shy of the base. The 'foot' is the part of the macaron that looks rough and bubbly, at the base of the biscuit.

Take out of the oven and slide the entire sheet of baking paper off the baking sheet and onto a dampened bench top. Leave it for a few minutes before peeling the macarons off the baking paper and putting them on a rack to cool - the slight moisture underneath helps them to un-fasten from the paper.

I knew the mini whoopie pie tin ones wouldn't work as soon as I saw them. They were clearly going to be an odd shape...

And indeed it was the case. They looked... well.... they looked a bit like whoopee pies!

Added to which, many of them did not come evenly out of the pans....

And the ones that did looked so awful that I had to discard them.

The finished macarons should look rounded and regular, not grainy. I work off the principle that about 15% of any batch will be discarded - each batch makes heaps, so it's worthwhile being discriminating and only bringing to the table the most perfect ones you have!










As the macarons are cooling, you can make up the peanut butter-cream. Combine the butter, icing sugar and peanut butter and beat until you have a stiff cream (I do this by hand - the old-fashioned way). Add enough milk to make a smooth, pipe-able buttercream.

Scrape the buttercream into a piping bag and snip the end off.

Arrange the cooled macarons in pairs, taking into account the need to match them for size, and pipe a circle of buttercream onto one half of each pair. Then sandwich the pairs together by pressing the top down gently on the cream to join it to the bottom.

The cream should spread out to the edge of the biscuit, but not bulge over the edge.

You should end up with lovely, even, sweet and texturally-beautiful macarons.

They can be stored in a sealed airtight container in the refrigerator for up to a week.

















What else can go wrong? Well, there are a few errors that can creep into any batch - but hopefully, if you've followed the instructions carefully, your problem will be minimised.

My macarons are cracked or misshapen. 

This can happen when you don't leave them to form a skin at room temperature for long enough. But I always get a few in each batch that look like this. If it's a problem with more than a few, leave to set for longer next time.

My macarons have stuck together. 

Next time, pipe them a bit further apart. If they are not too fully joined, you can separate them with a sharp knife - if they are very fully joined, they won't look good even if separated.












Hope that helps!!
Best wishes from Dr Cupcake!