Salted Caramel Mini Macarons

Mini Salted Caramel Macarons

If you want many macarons, make mini macarons. I made another batch of Salted Caramel Macarons because I needed more to share with friends but this time made them mini-sized and got 80 finished macarons from a single recipe.

Mini macarons are so cute and I find that the small size is actually easier to pipe and bake, making them ideal for first time macaron makers. It can be a struggle to pipe even-sized rounds of macaron batter when when you don't have much piping experience so aiming for small nickle-sized rounds is a good place to start and then when you get the hang of it you can go bigger. As for the baking, I find that mini macarons bake more evenly because of their small size and are less likely to have hollow centers. 

To make the Mini Salted Caramel Macarons, just follow my original recipe but reduce the size and baking time — Mine took 10 minutes to bake but I started checking them at 7 minutes. It is important that you bake them long enough. They should feel very firm to the touch and not wobble a bit if you give one a gentle shake. It really is better to bake macarons a bit too long than too little. If they are underbaked, they won't want to release from the parchment and they'll tear and be fragile. I've been through this and it's very frustrating!

Please give mini macarons a try. Once you have success, you'll be hooked on making macarons and trust me, you friends and family won't mind one bit.

The piped mini macarons. I aimed for nickle-sized rounds and after settling they grew to be a bit bigger than a quarter.

Look at all those macaron shells from one batch! I got 160 shells, enough to make 80 finished macarons. Here the shells are sorted into pairs and ready to be filled with salted caramel buttercream.

The finished macarons.