Macaron Piping Tips

A tray of just-piped Lemon Mini Macarons.

Once you get the hang of it, you'll be filling trays fast and efficiently.

Don't get pulled into buying special kits, piping guides or indented silicon mats for making macarons. There are many "macaron cheats" on the market today but forget it, you don't any of those to make macarons and in the end, believe me, you don't want them.

To pipe macarons, all you need is your batter, disposable piping bags and four parchment lined sheetpans. It just takes a little practice and soon you'll be able to make beautiful macarons in any size you desire. Plus, piping macarons the old-fashioned way means there are no mats to wash and store!

A mat from Williams Sonoma that retails for $19.95 and an indented red silicon mat that retails at World Market for $7.99. You need four lined sheet pans for one recipe of macarons. Do you really want to buy four of these and have wash and store them them after each use? I don’t. Parchment paper works just fine and gives you the freedom to pipe the macarons any size you like.

This is just part of a single recipe of Cherry Mini Macarons that I recently made, sorted into pairs and ready for filling. I got 80 completed macarons!

Completed Blackberry and Cherry Mini Macarons

Here are a few helpful piping tips to get you started:

Tip #1: Start Small

Begin by making small quarter-sized macarons. Smaller macarons are easier to pipe and you'll get approximatley 80 out of one batch so you'll get a lot of piping practice when you make them. Take your time and just go for it.

Tip #2: Give The Tip A Straight Clip

When you cut the tip of your disposable pastry bag, clip straight across.  A diagonally cut makes wacky shaped macarons.

Tip #3: Take Your Time

Cut your pastry bag just about 1/3 of an inch from the bottom, creating a small hole for the batter to flow through. The batter won't come out fast but you'll have more control of the batter and can take your time to concentrate and pipe the best even-sized macarons that you can.

Tip #4: Tie The Bag

Don't forget to tie the top of your pastry bag with a rubber band or clip. This keeps the batter from spilling out the top of the bag as you pipe which trust me, is very frustrating.

Tip #5: Be Ready To Go

Before you even begin piping, have four sheetpans lined with parchment paper and be ready to go. Once you start piping, you want to stick with it until the end without having to set your bag down to get another pan ready.

Tip #6: Cut Yourself Some Slack

Practice makes perfect so don't expect to be a pro the first time you pipe macarons. Give yourself time to practice and improve and remember that a misshapen macaron tastes just as good as a perfectly round one.

Double Chocolate Espresso Macarons

Chocolate is great but double chocolate is even better and espresso, well that's chocolate's perfect partner, which is why I had to create these macarons.

The rich filling is so simple to make, it's just butter, sea salt, sugar, espresso, vanilla and dark cocoa powder whipped until smooth and creamy and the chocolate macaron shells are made by adding just 10 grams of dark cocoa powder to my tried and true recipe. It couldn't be easier and it couldn't be more delicous.

Here's the recipe:

Double Chocolate Espresso Macarons
180g ground almonds, sifted
270g powdered sugar, sifted
10g dark cocoa powder (I use Hershey's Special Dark)
150g egg whites, aged 2 to 4 days in the fridge and then brought to room temperature
100g granulated sugar

Line four heavy baking sheets with good quality parchment paper and set aside. Also, set aside two pastry bags for the piping of the macarons.

Sift together your ground almonds with the powdered sugar and cocoa powder and set aside.

Whisk the egg whites (at room temperature) to glossy firm peaks adding the granulated sugar gradually in four parts.

Incorporate the dry ingredients into the beaten egg whites using a large rubber scraper.  Mix well. 

Fold the mixture with the rubber scraper by pulling down the sides and flipping the mixture over. Do this until you have a smooth mixture that falls like a “ribbon” off the scraper.

Transfer the mixture into the two piping bags. Use rubber bands to close the piping bags. Clip the tip of the bags, one at a time, and pipe small quarter sized rounds, leaving 1-inch of space between each because they spread as they set. Leave to set for about 30 minutes or until the top has formed a crust and is not sticky to the touch.

While they are setting, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. A convection oven is preferable. 

Bake one sheet at a time in the center of the oven for about 12 minutes or until the cookie is firm, matte and doesn't wobble when touched.

Leave on the baking tray until cool then lift them all off the parchment carefully. You may need to use a thin knife to help lift them off.

Sort into pairs and fill with Chocolate Espresso Buttercream.

Chocolate Espresso Buttercream
3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 1/2 tablespoons espresso powder dissolved in 2 teaspoons of hot water, cooled
1/4 cup dark cocoa powder (I use Hershey's Special Dark)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup powdered sugar

Combine all of the ingredients in a mixing bowl and whip until smooth and creamy. This takes about 5 minutes.

Lots Of Entrees

Dining room volunteers Diana and Mary Ann with the very first meal of the day: Turkey Breast, Stuffing, Freekeh, Green Beans and Cranberry Sauce.

It was a busy day at the Wednesday Community Meal. We served 293 meals and had to change our entree nine different times to utilize the ingredients we had but most importantly everyone who came to our door received a nutritious and well-rounded meal.

Please excuse my poor handwriting. Here is the list of entrees we served today, crossed out once they were gone.

The first few guests in the door got sliced turkey breast with stuffing, freekeh, green beans and cranberry sauce and then we had to change our main dish to chicken strips, chicken breasts, beef and broccoli over rice, sweet and sour chicken, salmon, ground beef and gravy over rice and finally pizza.

The pizza was donated by Pizza Schmizza and is always very popular with our guests. The restaurant generously donates pizza to us each week and slices that aren't served at the Wednesday meal are handed out the next day to guests who come to Trinity Episcopal Cathedral for food bags. 

The third entree we served today was chicken breasts over rice with green beans and pineapple. Diana graciously posed for a quick picture. The dining room was hopping today and kept our servers very busy.

A meal of sweet and sour chicken, brown rice and green beans.

Pizza from Pizza Schmizza

In addition to the entrees,  guests got hot soup, salad and dessert. The latter was homemade vanilla pudding and blueberry cobbler. Needless to say, our guests were very happy.

Today's salad were garnished with 1/2 a mini pizza made by volunteers Cindy, Nancy and John. It was a delicious way to utilize a donation of pepperoni, flat bread and English muffins from Good Samaritan Hospital.

Cheryl testing the homemade vanilla pudding. The decision to make pudding came about because I had 24 egg yolks left over from making French macarons and didn't want them to go to waste. Cheryl and I found an easy pudding recipe and came in extra early today to make it, knowing that it would need a couple hours to cool. Volunteer John also helped by measuring ingredients and constantly stirring the pudding while it cooked. It feels so good to stop food from going to waste. And, it feels extra good to create something delicious from it.

Homemade Blueberry Crisp made with blueberries from The Oregon Food Bank that Cheryl sweetened and topped with biscuits from Good Samaritan Hospital. As an extra touch, she sprinkled the biscuits with a bit of cinnamon sugar, added a few pats of butter and baked the cobbler until it was golden and bubbly. Soooo goooood!

And last but not least, I have to give a special shout to our wonderful dedicated dishwashers who come in each week and work harder than anyone. I snapped this picture mid-service when they all had their noses to the grindstone. From left to right is Jay, Bill, Steve and Dave. Not pictured is Kevin who runs to and from the dining room busing the dirty dishes. They simply are the best!

Violet Cookies

I know it's not Spring yet, but it is right around the corner.

Besides warmer weather, I'm really looking forward to the emergence of some color in my garden and couldn't resist getting ahead of the season and making a batch of these pretty Violet Cookies.

Using the wet-on-wet decorating technique and different icing colors, you could make other flower varieties as well.  The only trick is to have all your icing colors mixed and ready in piping bags before you begin decorating — All of the colors have to be flood consistency and added one right after the other.

Start with decorating one cookie at a time and once you get the hang of it, you can move onto decorating up to three cookies at once in assembly-line style. 

Here's how:

Bake some round sugar cookies and get your flood consistency royal all ready, tinted and bagged.  I mixed white, lavender, dark purple and bright yellow. I fitted the white and lavender icing bags with #2 tips and the dark purple and bright yellow icing bags with #1 tips.

Outline and fill the cookie with white icing and immediately add five lavender dots.

Use a skewer, toothpick or scribe tool to swipe through the dots. I swiped through these twice but later decided that just a single swipe was better. Be sure to wipe your tool clean after each swipe so that the design stays neat.

After swiping through all of the dots, add five dark purple dots to the bottom of the petals.

Move your skewer, toothpick or scribe tool up and down through the dark purple dots.

Here is a flower with just one swipe through the petals and more exaggerated swipes through the dark purple. This is the look I like best but it took some experimenting to get to it. When working on a new design I always bake a few extra cookies because I know practice makes perfect. Now all this cookie needs is a drop of bright yellow icing in the center. The cookies need to dry completely before packaging or serving, this take about 8 hours.

Closeup of the finished cookies.

Raspberry Macarons

I love the modern and monochromatic look of these deep pink raspberry macarons.

To get the colors, I used Wilton Rose gel coloring and just a touch of AmeriColor Electric Blue gel coloring to tint the meringue for the shells, but the filling color came about naturally — It's just Crofter's Raspberry Spread whipped with butter and a few drops of LorAnn Oils Raspberry Flavor.

The filling really couldn't be easier to make and is "very raspberry" without being overly sweet. It's the perfect partner for the sweet macaron shells.

Here's the recipe:

Raspberry Macarons
180g ground almonds, sifted
270g powdered sugar, sifted
150g egg whites, aged 2 to 4 days in the fridge and then brought to room temperature
100g granulated sugar
Wilton Rose gel coloring
AmeriColor Electric Blue gel coloring

Line four heavy baking sheets with good quality parchment paper and set aside. Also, set aside two pastry bags for the piping of the macarons.

Sift together your ground almonds with the powdered sugar and set aside.

Whisk the egg whites (at room temperature) to glossy firm peaks adding the granulated sugar gradually in four parts. Add the coloring. I added a pea-sized drop of the rose coloring and just a touch of the blue (I dipped a toothpick into the blue coloring and just touched the meringue with it).

Incorporate the dry ingredients into the beaten egg whites using a large rubber scraper.  Mix well. 

Fold the mixture with the rubber scraper by pulling down the sides and flipping the mixture over. Do this until you have a smooth mixture that falls like a “ribbon” off the scraper.

Transfer the mixture into the two piping bags. Use rubber bands to close the piping bags. Clip the tip of the bags, one at a time, and pipe small quarter sized rounds, leaving 1-inch of space between each because they spread as they set.

The shells resting before baking.

Leave to set for about 30 minutes or until the top has formed a crust and is not sticky to the touch.

While they are setting, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. A convection oven is preferable.  Bake one sheet at a time in the center of the oven for about 10 to 12 minutes or until the cookie is firm, matte and doesn't wobble when touched.

The shells after baking. Be sure to let them cool before trying to remove them from the parchment.

After cooling, you should be able to lift the shells off the parchment. If this doesn't work, you may need to gently slide a long thin knife or spatula underneath the shells to help release them. You can see the spatula I sometimes need to use on the counter behind the tray of shells.

Leave on the baking tray until cool then lift them all off the parchment carefully. You may need to use a thin knife or spatula to help lift them off.

Sort into pairs and fill with Raspberry Filling.

Filling the shells.

After assembling the macarons, store them in the refrigerator until you are ready to serve them. Macarons are best served at room temperature so take them out about 30 minutes before you are ready to serve.

Raspberry Filling
3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup Crofter's Raspberry Spread or another high-quality low-sugar raspberry preserve
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
Just 3 drops of Raspberry Flavor (I used LorAnn brand)

Whip the butter until it is light and smooth. Add the jam, sea salt and raspberry flavor.

Whip this together until the filling is light and creamy. When you first start whipping the ingredients together, it will look like a curdled mess, but don't panic. The filling will eventually come together and be beautiful. Just whip it and whip it good!

The spread and flavoring I used.

The finished smooth and creamy filling.

Delicious Treats

The focaccia we made and served today was topped with sliced pepperoni, red pepper and Parmesan cheese.

I love serving just-baked homemade bread at the Wednesday Community Meal. It does takes some extra effort to make the dough early enough so that it will be able to rise, be shaped and baked by the 11 a.m. start of the meal, but it's always well worth it.

Besides making the dining room smell wonderful and welcoming, the taste of warm bread makes our guests so happy.

It's also a real bargain for us to make. We get the flour from The Oregon Food Bank and then all we need to purchase is the yeast, sugar, oil and salt. I made 18 full recipes of foccacia today for less than $10.

A meal of chicken skewers, freekeh, green beans and foccacia. The uncooked freekeh,which is a cereal grain made from green wheat, was donated by Good Samaritan Hospital. I had never cooked or tasted freekah until today so it was a learning experience. It was very good and a nice change from rice and pasta.  We had to change our entree multiple times today but everyone got a piece of warm focaccia.

But that's not all, our guest today were also treated to big and beautiful fresh raspberries from The Oregon Food Bank. They were delivered to us this morning at 10 a.m., just in time to be utilized in today's lunch. We added them to the salads and served them in cups alongside slices of chocolate cake donated by Baker & Spice Bakery. It really was a delicious day!

Fresh raspberries and chocolate cake from Baker & Spice.

Here are some of the wonderful volunteers who helped serve 279 meals today at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral:

Cheryl and Dave help organize the weekly meal and are so dedicated. The meal simply wouldn't happen without them.  Cheryl cooked two whole turkey's for us to serve and Dave sliced the turkey and the giant ham that we served today. He's also part of our ace dishwashing team.

Cindy usually helps serve the dessert but we were short on kitchen volunteers today so she graciously pitched in to help plate food. She's wonderful and always willing to help wherever needed.

Bill and Leah are both dedicated longtime volunteers. Bill comes early to help set up the dining room and washes dishes. He's always one of the first to arrive and one of the last to leave. Leah is in charge of the salads but also pitches in wherever needed. Look at those gorgeous raspberries we served today! I must also mention that in the background is super volunteer Kevin in action. During the two hour service,  he's always on the move clearing dishes out of the dining room.

Morello Cherry Macarons

When I want to make macarons but need some flavor inspiration, I just need to take a walk to my neighborhood New Season's grocery store and head for the jam isle. I'm always amazed at the local company's wide selection of low-sugar, pure fruit spreads and pleased that they just need to be whipped with softened unsalted butter for a quick and flavorful macaron filling.

On a recent trip to the store, I had a hard time choosing between a jar of Crofter's Morello Cherry Spread and Bonne Maman French Rhubarb Jam. In the end, the deciding factor was that the cherry spread was on sale and that's how these cute Morello Cherry Macarons came about.

Here's the recipe:

Morello Cherry Macarons
180g ground almonds, sifted
270g powdered sugar, sifted
150g egg whites, aged 2 to 4 days in the fridge and then brought to room temperature
100g granulated sugar
 Red food coloring

Line four heavy baking sheets with good quality parchment paper and set aside. Also, set aside two pastry bags for the piping of the macarons.

Sift together your ground almonds with the powdered sugar and set aside.

Whisk the egg whites (at room temperature) to glossy firm peaks adding the granulated sugar gradually in four parts. Add the coloring. Be sure to add enough coloring since macarons lighten during baking. Make the batter darker than you want the macarons to turn out.

Incorporate the dry ingredients into the beaten egg whites using a large rubber scraper.  Mix well. 
Fold the mixture with the rubber scraper by pulling down the sides and flipping the mixture over. Do this until you have a smooth mixture that falls like a “ribbon” off the scraper.

Transfer the mixture into the two piping bags. Use rubber bands to close the piping bags. Clip the tip of the bags, one at a time, and pipe small quarter sized rounds, leaving 1-inch of space between each because they spread as they set.

Piped macarons that need to rest at room temperature before baking.

Leave to set for about 30 minutes or until the top has formed a crust and is not sticky to the touch.

While they are setting, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. A convection oven is preferable.  Bake one sheet at a time in the center of the oven for about 12 minutes or until the cookie is firm, matte and doesn't wobble when touched.

The macarons after baking.

 Leave on the baking tray until cool then lift them all off the parchment carefully. You may need to use a thin knife to help lift them off.

Sort into pairs and fill with Morello Cherry Filling.

Filling the macarons.

Morello Cherry Filling
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup Morello Cherry Spread (I used Crofter's brand)
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon pure almond extract (a touch of almond extract always enhances a cherry dessert)


Whip all of the ingredients together until the buttercream is light and smooth.

Valentine's Day Macarons

I want to share with you these cute Valentine's Day Macarons that I made for Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty's Handwriting Workshop held today at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.

I made them by whipping up a batch of salted caramel mini macarons and then once the macaron shells had baked and cooled, I drew on little hearts using a pink AmeriColor edible ink pen. It was so easy to do and now I can't stop thinking of other designs I want to attempt. I have a feeling green clovers for St. Patrick's day will be up next but I'm getting ahead of myself.  

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's how I made them:

I made a batch of salted caramel macarons.

After baking, I sorted the shells into pairs and drew a heart on one of them using a pink edible ink pen.

Then I added the salted caramel filling and put the cookies together.

Cookies plated and ready to be served at the handwriting workshop. All of them were enjoyed but the macarons were gobbled up first. I heard one boy tell his mom "the macarons were gone in 5 minutes." Next year I'll remember to make more.

Free Handwriting Workshop And Cookies!

I once again have the honor of making cookies for Inga Dubay and Barbara Getty's annual free handwriting workshop tomorrow at Trinity Episcopal Catherdral. 

Because it falls on Valentine's Day I thought these pink alphabet cookies would be cute and appropriate. I've made alphabet cookies for the workshop before but this year's cookies were easier because I added the lettering with an edible ink marker instead of piping them on.

So there will be free cookies, but the main reason to attend is that it's a wonderful opportunity to improve your handwriting and learn from two pros. It's also fun. 

Here are the details:

 Rekindle the love for your handwriting

Free Handwriting Success Workshop
with authors
Inga Dubay & Barbara Getty

Saturday, February 14, 2015 10am—1pm
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Kempton Hall
147 NW 19th Avenue, Portland, OR 97209

Presented by Trinity Cathedral Arts
to promote legible handwriting and celebrate National Handwriting Day

•All workshop materials provided
•School-aged children accompanied by parents
  are welcome
•Books available at a special discount

International handwriting experts Inga Dubay & Barbara Getty are co-authors of many popular handwriting books, including, WRITE NOW: The Getty-Dubay Program for Handwriting Success, ITALIC LETTERS, and the GETTY-DUBAY ITALIC HANDWRITING SERIES for children. They will teach everything you need to know to get started with legible, useful handwriting. 


•Come early. This is a free event and seating cannot be guaranteed
•Suggested donation: canned or packaged food for Trinity Cathedral Food Pantry

E-mail info@handwritingsuccess.com for more information.