French bakers fill their pâtisserie windows with rainbow-colored stacks of these delicate cookies in every flavor, from lemon to rose cream to lavender. The cookies have a crisp shell, a chewy center, and a creamy filling, coming together for a heavenly combination of texture and flavor. When I saw a Martha Stewart magazine at the beginning of Spring Break, I knew exactly what I would be doing instead of going to school or doing homework, and I experimented several times with this particular flavor, making slight adjustments to my own caramel recipe and adding a splash of almond extract to turn up the flavor in Martha’s original base recipe. I’ve made three batches in the last week, and the obsession is far from over. I’ll be making lemon curd next — that is, if I can ever pull myself away from the salted caramel combination I fell hard for.
Macaron base, adapted slightly from Martha Stewart Living
2/3 cup blanched almonds
1 cup powdered sugar
2 egg whites
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Caramel filling
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup cream
1/2 teaspoon salt (preferably Maldon flaked sea salt)
2 tablespoons water
Macarons
You’ll need to start with the almonds. You can buy blanched almonds, or you can blanch them yourself — just pour boiling water over the almonds to cover. When the water has cooled enough for you to dip your fingers in without getting burned, remove a few almonds and rub the brownish skin off with your fingers (the skin will puff up away from the nut, making it easy to peel away). Dry the almonds, as they will be wet if you blanched them yourself. Grind in a food processor until the almonds become a light powder — this usually takes about one minute. Add powdered sugar and grind again, for about 30 seconds, to form a flour-like substance.
Separate eggs and add granulated sugar to egg whites. Using a hand mixer, beat on high until the egg whites form into stiff peaks (when you take the beaters out of the egg, it will hold the shape left by the beaters and the eggs will be glossy).
Pour almond flour into the center of the egg whites and fold together with a rubber spatula until it flows easily. This will take somewhere between 25 and 30 strokes.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Snip a small corner off of a sandwich-sized Ziploc bag and insert a piping tip with a wide hole. Place a silpat or parchment paper on a cookie sheet and pipe almond and egg white mixture into even mounds, using circular motions. I like these macarons miniature sized, so I make my mounds a little less than half an inch wide. Bang cookie sheet on counter to get rid of any air bubbles.
Bake for about 8 minutes, until the cookies have puffed and formed into shells, with golden bubbles at the base of each.
Filling
Measure out brown sugar. Put half of the sugar in a saucepan with two tablespoons of water over medium heat. Whisk swiftly until the mixture bubbles. Add butter, sliced into pieces so that it will melt more quickly, and cream. Add remaining sugar. Turn heat back on, and stir often. Bring to a boil and allow to boil gently for several minutes so that the mixture will thicken. When the mixture is thick enough to cling to the back of a spoon, remove from heat and stir in salt.
Cool before sandwiching cookies together.
Finish by placing a dot of caramel on the flat side of one cookie and sandwiching together gently. These save well if refrigerated in an air-tight container.