Mad About Macarons: Make Macarons Like the French

*UPDATE* February 16, 2012 My second batch made using this book turned out unmistakeably PERFECT. I whipped my egg whites better (as they should have been in the first place. I underestimated how much time it took to whip 150g of egg whites) to create a thicker batter which was necessary. I baked at 325F for 11 minutes and the result was just outstanding. *JANUARY REVIEW* I don't remember the first time I ever saw a Macaron. I didn't even taste one until a few weeks ago (and it was just a shell), but I'd been hunting for a good macaron book for awhile. After reading the reviews raving about this book, I decided to purchase it. And I was not disappointed!! Like some people, I was a little startled about all the metric measurements. Already having a food scale ($10 at Kohl's), I didn't see it as being a problem. And it's very easy to do a quick google search for conversation calculators!! I can't imagine giving this book a bad review because it uses the metric system. Macarons are a french dessert, there's no reason why this book should be specifically catering to Americans. The author also notes that ingredients are listed in grams because some measurements may be too small to measure in cups. Some of the ingredients were hard to find, but knowing your grocery store really helped. Castor sugar (note: NOT the same at icing/confectioner's sugar) can be found at Wegmans, while Almond flour and custard powder (used for a lot of the fillings) can be found at almost any grocery store. I had to make a few investments like sieves, scrapers, etc. but the outcome was completely worth it! With my very first batch I was so excited (like others) to see feet when I opened the oven!! I do not think I whipped my egg whites well enough, and I had to adjust my oven temperature to 325F (as opposed to the 320F/160C stated in the book) for the third cookie sheet. I was not surprised because the author mentioned that without a convection oven the temperature may have needed to be higher. My first two cookie sheets had gooey shells and were odd shaped because my cookie sheets were warped and made the batter run. I think my batter was also a little bit too thin as well. But after the temperature adjust I had some really beautiful macarons...on my FIRST try!!! I only ended up with 12 sandwiches total (out of about 30) but trial and error was really easy with this book. Everything was simple, spelled out, and had great photographs for comparison. The first filling I made was the lemon filling and it came out delicious and was super simple to make. I do not regret buying this book for any reason. While my first batch wasn't absolutely perfect, I was amazed at what I was able to do!! This is definitely the book you want to buy if you want to make your own parisian macarons. Out of all the other books on the market, this one has the best reviews and the greatest success stories. I would recommend this book to any baker. While the ingredients and supply list can be a little intimidating, the process of making macarons was a breeze. With only 12 successful macarons I am not discouraged; I am inspired and excited to try more. Jill Colonna has really hit it big with her passion for macarons, and will quickly turn any baking novice into a brilliant french pastry chef!!

I'm really impressed with this book! SO awesome! I'm a careful baker and always follow recipes to the letter for the first run, so I'm not one of those people who makes 50 alterations and then attributes the result to recipe I started with. Truthfully, I didn't expect my first attempt at macarons to turn out very well after reading so much about how difficult they are for amateur bakers and how precise every little detail has to be in order for them to work. I did take great care with weighing the ingredients and I used only very high quality ingredients. My first attempt (the dark chocolate, btw) was utterly amazing! The best macarons I, or my family and friends, had ever tasted! I cannot wait to make more. You should know going in that baking macarons is not a fast and easy process, though I'm sure it gets much more so with practice. It is time consuming and labor intensive, but I think the result is well worth the effort. This is a great book with very clear instructions--even if you don't really know what you're doing going in, and delicious recipes. I'd recommend to anyone!

It is a good overall book for people who want to start baking macarons. Nothing new here, but good basic pointers nevertheless. The ideas for yolks are spot, a great addition to macaron making as you usually find yourself with lots of yolks (I use to throw them out, now I do creme brullee). The flavor combos are very interesting and with a flair of nce creativity. It only covers macaron making through the french meringue method, after the basic recipe its a collection of interesting flavor combinations. Anyhow good overall book for begginers.

I initially bought Macarons by Cecile Cannone. Please see my review for that book. Although the taste was wonderful, the presentation was off. My shells would never look perfect. The feet would never be perfect across all batches. They weren't round. The list goes on. So I moved to an intermediate learner book called Mad about Macarons! Here is what I have learned: Additional things I had to buy: - medium sieve (Williams Sonoma does not sell one with large enough holes to work. I had to go to Sur La Table and get this strange looking thing. A big short cylindrical metal thing with a wire mesh attached to one side. It cost about $40) - a hand spatula that is flat on one end and round on the other (again, only could find at Sur La Table. It cost $4) - a digital scale (I got it at Williams Sonoma. I have a spring weighted scale but that is in ounces. This book is all in grams. The digital scale really helped on that end. Think I paid $50) - bought a bigger Wilton frosting bag to put the shell batter in Things I stopped doing (that I had to do with the other book) - stopped having to put egg white powder in to take care of humidity problems. yay! - stopped having to worry about how I mix the batter - stopped having to put salt in the egg mix - stopped having to refrigerate my leftover almond meal and then put it in the oven pre-mixing to get the humidity out. Thank God! What is cool about this book: * it firmly recommends you sift your sugars, powdered sugar (which she calls icing sugar by the way), almond meal, cocoa powder if using, etc). I like it! I throw out my big almond chunks and although I had some initial heart ache about wasting expensive stuff, it really makes the mix look so soft when you are dry mixing it with your whisk! * in this book it states you can mix the liquid and dry mix together crazily and not worry about it. I was so scared of how to mix my batter before, I kind of like this method. Don't over mix though...I saw oil stains in my shells last time I did that. * tells you how to get perfect round macarons. Follow what it says. Let your tip rest on the cookie sheet and then put pressure on to build a circle. It really works! Do this at a 45 degree angle. Previously, I was doing a 90 degree angle and my shells were uncontrollable and not perfectly circle. Totally bugged me! * I like my new tools. They make everything easier. Love the hand spatula. Love the strange looking strainer. Love Love Love! * No need to open the oven sporadically to let the humidity out. * The recipe is better for the shell. I no longer have oil stains or cracked shells. My feet are perfect. I do not have to use two cookie sheets at once either (one to insulate the other). How do I do this? 1. my oven temp has to be at 300 degrees NO convection. The fan burns my shells on the side the airflow is going. 2. Cook for 10 minutes. Perfect. What I kind of don't like about this book: - where the heck do I get things like custard powder? It's in one of the recipes...still no clue how to find that easily. I think some other ingredients might be like this as well. - it doesn't have a troubleshooting section like the Macarons book has. Hence, I'm glad I bought both. - I would say that these recipes seem more like european desired flavors and the Macarons book is more the american flavor style. What I mean by that is the Macarons book has more things like chocolate coffee flavor, salty caramel on chocolate, etc. the flavors in this book seem more "exotic" but I haven't tried anything crazy yet because I needed to perfect my shells first. It took me about five batches to get the shell perfect with this book, but I never could do that with the other. I got frustrated. So now I use this one for shells but I mix recipes with the other. I'm glad I bought both. I would say this one is an absolute must if you want your shells to not only taste perfect, but look perfect for giving. Hope this helps!

I purchased this to give to a friend who loves to bake macarons, my only complaint and reason for 4 stars is that the recipes are in grams, so hopefully she can convert them to regular measurements. That was not listed in the description or any of the reviews. If she doesn't want to keep it I will return it if I can i bought it a while ago as a gift.

A year ago, when my son and his fiance' (now married) announced their engagement, we agreed that they would have the traditional Western Pennsylvania Cookie Table at their reception. My future daughter-in-law made a special request of a cookie called a "macaron". Not a "macaroon" she emphasized. I had never heard of them. She had them several years ago when her high school band went to California. Well, it was a start of a year of research, experimentation, failures and successes. I was mastering the art of macaron-making, but was not getting consistent results - until I bought Jill Colonna's book "Mad About Macarons". Using the methods in Jill's book, I get excellent results 95% of the time. Jill gives step-by-step instructions, photographs to go with them, and a good number of recipes - from basic to fancy. Her instructions are good enough that I am daring to try my own flavor combinations. As others have mentioned, the measuements are in metrics. I have an old Weight-Watchers scale that I use. It's got the metrics on it and I have used that to weigh my ingredients and it has worked well. I would recommend an inexpensive scale that has both metric and standard measures. Anyway, if you want a fool-proof method of making macarons, "Mad About Macarons" is an excellent book! Oh, and the macarons for the wedding? They turned out perfect! I made Chocolate Macarons with a dark chocolate coffee ganache, Macarons with vanilla custard filling, and Basic macarons, colored pink, with a white chocolate/raspberry ganache filling! Thank you Jill! Since posting the above review, I was reading the other reviews and note that some are surprised that the cookies are the same basic recipe. Actually, you can be creative with your macarons and match the flavor to the filling. I put a little cinnamon in my dry ingredients and match it with a pumpkin filling using pumpkin pie spice, or replace the almond flour with some ground up black walnut and pair with maple filling. YUM!!! Oh boy, I think I'm going to start aging some egg whites now!

I've tried making macarons several times before from three French cookbooks/macaron books purchased in France/Switzerland and failed each time. I decided to try it again and bought Mad About Macarons. The first try, I had wonderful success. They were absolutely delicious. I've had macarons in France from the best pastry shops like LaDurée and Gérard Mulot's. The ones I made from this book were just as good as those or even better! And mine were much, much better than any than any I've eaten in the US from our pastry shops where the texture is all wrong. The recipe is great because it uses the easier French meringue as opposed to the more time consuming Italian meringue. Also, it is much easier to not worry about treating the meringue with kid gloves! One criticism of the book is that the pictures for the macaronnage stage could be more numerous and larger. I would suggest going to youtube and typing "macaronnage" and watching videos from French chefs. If you don't understand French, you can still see how shiny the mixture needs to become for it to be right and how it needs to fall in a ribbon. Video is much better at conveying this than still photos. I used Honeyville almond meal/flour this time whereas in the past I had made my own in the food processor and that too might have been a factor in my success. I have been diagnosed with a wheat and dairy allergy in the last two years, so the macaron "shells" are perfect since they contain no dairy or wheat. In the book, there are only a handful of jam type fillings that are dairy free. I am not too interested in jam filling for macarons....I want creamy ones. I've experimented and made my own cream type filling using coconut milk and palm oil shortening (non-hydrogenated). To do this, use the author's basic pastry cream recipe for the macarons à la vanilla on page 35, but substitute coconut milk (canned, high-fat, the creamiest part of the coconut milk in the can) for the whole milk and substitute palm oil shortening for the butter. I also used arrowroot powder instead of cornstarch the author uses. Compensate for taste (since nothing tastes as good as butter!) with a little extra vanilla or almond extract or even some other extract. I also would have loved if the author had included some information on natural coloring agents. I refuse to use artificial colors in my cooking/diet. I wonder if anyone has experimented with beet powder etc.? I will just make my macarons without artificial coloring...not as pretty but just as delicious. If I experiment with beet powder, I'll update this review. In any case, the book is absolutely worth the price for the basic recipe and technique. Macarons were my favorite dessert before I became aware of my wheat and dairy allergies. I am so happy to be able to make them and enjoy them here in the States!

I bought this book because I had tasted some delicious macaroons in Washington, DC. After researching in the internet and reading several blogs I decided to buy this book and hope for the best. Well, I am not dissapointed!!! I had already a small scale that I use to measure food portions and calories, so switching to metric was no issue. I carefully measured all the ingredients such as the author described, mixed the resulting batter as described for no more than five minutes and got the "ribbon" effect she speaks about. The most difficult part was the piping and only because I chose a tip with too big of an opening. Do leave enough room between the circles because they do spread out a bit. This discouraged me a bit as I thought perhaps the batter was too thin. I let them sit for 30 minutes on the counter while pre-heating the oven to 320F/160C - I followed her instructions and set the timer to 8 minutes to check on the cookies and almost fainted when I opened the oven door and my macaroons had feet!!! They had risen beautifully! I baked them for another two minutes and voila! Done! Made a guava mousse to fill them up. They are currently in the fridge in a tight sealed container to cure overnight. I highly recommend this book! It has really interesting flavor mixes for all types of occasions. Just follow the instructions snd you will have perfect macaroons to impress your family and friends alike!

Good for ideas. Nice book

I read all the reviewers here saying that this book is THE book because the ratios of ingredients lead to perfect macaron shells. The reviews are all true! I have never baked cookies before in my life, but I thought I'd start with the hardest kind, and I made chocolate macarons. They worked perfectly. The instructions here are very detailed and simple. You don't require any fancy baking accessories, except for a piping bag with a circular tip. I didn't use a pastry scraper - I just used a flat spatula instead, and it worked fine. I even made the ground almonds by taking almonds and blending them with a simple hand blender in my kitchen. Then I passed the almonds through a sieve and only used the fine bits (then re-ground the chunkier bits). The scale I used was a cheap analog scale that I bought from Target for $5. I made sure it was accurate by measuring things like 100g chocolate bars and seeing it read "100g" (which it did). The macaron shells came out perfectly. They were glossy and no cracks appeared at all. Just remember she reports the temperature in Celsius, and most ovens here are Fahrenheit. Overall, I'd say this is the best book to buy, and once you master her recipes (which are mostly different fillers for the macarons), you can probably experiment on your own. There is a patisserie near my house, and they sell macarons for almost $2 a piece. Mine look better, and this was the first time I made them. Great success!

Mejor no pierdas dinero con este libro. No sirve para nada . No explican lo suficinete. Solo son fotos y ya esta

Buen libro PERO imaginé que traería buenos tips y no mucho... a investigar por otro lado.

Best book to ease the pain of macaron baking.Like all the home bakers who have tried and failed in baking this little cookies,I was apprehensive about buying this book.I have tried many recipes online with little success.But all bakers know,Macarons are a dream bake.It can make or kill your day. Thank you Jill,your book with all the details and illustrations, helped me bake the perfect macarons in the first try.I cant thank you enough.As a baker myself,i could bake almost everything but macarons are a whole different story. Its exciting to start baking macarons when you want to try out a new recipe and utterly disappointing to see the failed macarons and more confusing is you dont exactly know what went wrong where.I hope this book helps a lot of bakers like me to master macaron making.