Ingredients — what you'll need

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Step-by-step method

At a glance

You'll be making these special macarons in stages—starting with whipping Italian meringue using a hot sugar syrup, folding it into an almond mixture, then piping and baking delicate shells that need time to develop a skin before going in the oven. The trickiest part is timing the sugar syrup to exactly 118°C and watching for those tacky shells to dry before baking, but the real payoff comes when you fill them with a luxurious salted caramel buttercream that you'll need to whip for a good 8 minutes.

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The right flour

In a large bowl, mix together the icing sugar and almond flour. The almond flour should be finely ground. Blanched almonds are recommended, but I've also tried it with unpeeled ones and it worked fine — the resulting macaron batter just turns out a bit darker.
Ingredients
- 300 gram Powdered Sugar
- 300 gram Almond Flour
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Flavouring and colour

Stir the walnut essence and gel food colouring into the egg whites. Pour this mixture over the sugar and almond flour, but don't mix it in yet.
Ingredients
- 3 gram Food Coloring
- 110 gram Egg White
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Sugar syrup

Put the caster sugar and water into a saucepan. This is where you'll make the sugar syrup. After many attempts, I firmly believe the best macarons are made with a syrup like this. It needs to reach 118°C, so get yourself a candy thermometer — ideally a digital one — to measure it accurately.
Ingredients
- 300 gram Granulated Sugar
- 75 gram Water

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When to whisk the egg whites

Turn on the heat to fairly high (but not the very highest setting) and keep an eye on the rising temperature. At around 110°C, start whisking the egg whites in your stand mixer on medium speed. Recipe books usually say to start at 115°C, but I started earlier and it paid off. The whites should whip up nice and stiff.
Ingredients
- 110 gram Egg White
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Syrup at 118°C

Perfect. Now start pouring it into the mixer bowl while the whites are still whisking. Just turn the speed down to the lowest setting so you don't get splashed with hot syrup or spatter it all over the bowl.
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Whisk the whole mixture on high

Once all the syrup is in the bowl, increase the speed again (back to medium) and keep whisking until the meringue cools down to 50°C.
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Fold until smooth

Now fold the meringue into the almond mixture. Mix thoroughly. The batter needs to be smooth and perfectly combined.
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Transfer to a piping bag

Spoon the batter into a piping bag fitted with a plain, fairly wide round tip.
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Template with circles

Prepare your baking trays lined with either regular baking paper — on which you'll need to draw circles about 3.5 cm in diameter, ideally with a black marker, then flip the paper over so the ink is underneath.
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Silicone mat

Even better are silicone macaron baking mats. Mine are great because one side has slots for larger macarons and the other for smaller ones. This time I went with the smaller size. The batter quantity is enough for 5 silicone mats.
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A smooth surface

Pipe the batter carefully onto the mat. If the batter is properly prepared, it will spread out into a nice round shape and the surface will stay smooth.
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Tap the tray

Once your tray is full of piped macarons, tap it firmly against the counter a few times. You'll see a few small bubbles form on the surface and then disappear. If they're left in, the macarons will crack while baking.
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Watch for the skin to form

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Leave the macarons on the tray for about half an hour, then check whether the surface is still sticky. Once it's dry and no longer tacky, they're ready to bake. Sometimes it takes half an hour, sometimes a full hour — keep checking on them.
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Bake

Bake for 12–13 minutes in the middle of the oven. I haven't had much luck baking macarons on a fan setting with several trays at once. Let the baked shells cool completely before peeling them off the mat. Now prepare the filling.
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Bring the cream to a boil

Bring the cream to a boil in a saucepan.
Ingredients
- 300 gram Whipping Cream 33%
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Melt the sugar

Put 50 g of sugar into a second saucepan. Turn the heat up to almost the highest setting and wait for the sugar to melt. Add another 50 g of sugar and wait again until it melts. Keep repeating this in 50 g increments until you've used up all the sugar.
Ingredients
- 300 gram Granulated Sugar
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Tip:

I recommend using a stainless steel saucepan — a non-stick one might not survive this little experiment. The sugar will gradually caramelize beautifully.
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Watch out for burns and for browning too much

Keep an eye on two things: don't burn yourself (hot caramel really hurts!), and make sure the caramel doesn't get too dark, or it could burn and turn bitter.
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Add butter and salt

Take the finished caramel off the heat and stir in 65 g of salted butter. Or, like me, use plain butter plus a teaspoon or two of salt, depending on how salty you want your caramel. Stir until everything is well combined.
Ingredients
- 65 gram Unsalted Butter
- 10 gram Salt
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Pour in the cream

Put the pan back on the heat over low heat and stir. Slowly pour in the hot cream, stirring constantly until you get a smooth caramel mixture. Let it cool completely.
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Whip and fill the macarons

Whip the softened butter together with the cooled caramel. Beat for a good while, around 8 minutes. Use this filling to fill the macaron shells. Chill in the fridge until the next day.
Ingredients
- 250 gram Unsalted Butter

Salted Caramel Macarons

Name: Irresistible Salted Caramel Macarons
Prep time: 13 min
Cook time: 60 min
Total time: 145 min
Yield: 30
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 315 gram Unsalted Butter; 300 gram Powdered Sugar; 75 gram Water; 300 gram Whipping Cream 33%; 10 gram Salt; 3 gram Food Coloring; 300 gram Almond Flour; 220 gram Egg White; 600 gram Granulated Sugar

bohynekuchyne

Prep 13 min Cook 1 h

Plus 45 min of resting (not counted in active time)

9 Ingredients

21 Steps

Very hard Difficulty

Let’s cook

What's in it?

215 kcal

Calories

32 g

Carbohydrates

22 g

Fats

4 g

Proteins

The nutritional information is an estimate and may vary based on the specific ingredients used.

About this recipe

It's been a long time since these macarons were baked in this heavenly kitchen. They turned out the best of all my macaron attempts so far. They simply had to — they were for a birthday celebration.

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