I Love Macarons Paperback – November 11, 2009

I recently bought some macarons at a famous, high-end bakery in Yountville, CA, and immediately I wanted to learn how to create these charming little treats. Although I find a lot of my recipes online, I had the gut instinct that macarons needed more instruction, despite their relatively simple outward appearance. And I was right. The techniques in this delightful, thin cookbook require some knowledge and experience, despite the clear instructions. As long as readers understand the vocabulary (mostly explained in the book) and basic French pastry techniques, they will succeed. Others may take more time to learn. These pastries are not for the baker who expects to whip up macarons in the time it takes to bake a batch of brownies.Unless you know what makes the "perfect" macaron and what it takes to get there, you won't understand the excitement of seeing the "pieds," or frilled bases, form on the macarons while they are in the oven. It's not that creating macarons is particularly time-consuming or difficult, only that it takes skill, instinct, and confidence. And once you know what your goal is, you cannot help but feel the triumph of success. I failed only once, on my second attempt, but now that I know the techniques, I'm confident that I won't run into problems in the future unless I'm careless or impatient. Fortunately, author Ogita offers a troubleshooting page to pinpoint where readers might have gone wrong.Instead of supplying individual macaron recipes in different flavors, Ogita goes with a mix-and-match philosophy. You choose one of two macaron recipes -- French or Italian -- and then choose your flavors and colors from color pages, either to add to the almond flour or to the meringue.Although the author offers a recipe for real French buttercream as one of the fillings (this requires cooked sugar syrup, eggs, and butter), you can cut down your kitchen time by making American buttercream (butter and confectioners sugar -- recipe not included) or ganache. Okita supplies recipes for other fillings: chestnut cream, lemon curd, caramel cream. She then provides a wide variety of flavors, as she does with the macarons themselves, to add the one of two buttercream recipes, making the possible variations enormous.If you don't have a high-end grocery store in your area where you can find commercial almond flour, I recommend ordering  Bob's Red Mill Almond Meal/Flour  at the same time you buy this book. Store the almond flour in the freezer to keep it from going rancid; however, you'll need to bring the flour up to room temperature before you use it. Although you can make your own almond flour in the food processor, it is difficult to get it fine enough or to avoid making it into almond butter. Even if you eventually want to make your own almond flour, I recommend using commercially milled almond flour for your first few times, at least until you're familiar with the techniques and possible pitfalls, since starting with insufficiently fine flour will doom your recipe.This cookbook offers a solid introduction to creating the perfect macaron. Anyone can learn, even beginning bakers; however, the more experience you have, the better your chances of success the first time out. Now that I know the technique, I can make two batches back-to-back without much time or trouble. And I still get excited when I see the pieds.-- Debbie Lee Wesselmann

The first time I had a macaron in Paris, I knew I was addicted... This book is an excellant weapon to have in your macaron arsenal.Hisako does a great job walking you through the method of preparation with these challenging but full of flavor cookies. All kitchen tools you will need are explained. Troubleshooting techniques as well. She explains the two different types of batter for preparing the shell, which is impossible to find on the internet. The methods are easily written for the baking beginner to follow and understand. Detailed info on the flavoring agents, ingredients (props for using organic powdered sugar (many do not realize the importance of this).Once you have mastered the macaron shell and all the flavor options, you will move on to the cream filling. There are many types of creams, curds, custards, and ganche recipes. Detailed enough so they are easy to follow without overkill. The pictures are prefect.The book will wrap up (pun intended) with gift wrapping ideas for the macarons. If you have been to Paris then you know what I mean. Parisans take their macarons very serious.Last, (I will have to say is genious also because you never see this in a cookbook), she gives you recipes to make addional items with the leftover egg yolks. (Remember macarons are powdered sugar, ground almond, egg whites.) From creams, puddings, brulee, to ice cream. I thought that was a nice touch to have in a book.The content is detailed, not overwhelming, straight forard for the new baker and in depth enough for the macaron connoisseur.I highly recommend this book you are have the desire to bake these at home and learn about macarons. Great value for the price!**I would like to add on after baking a few macarons, pay close attention to the fact that you are using a 375 oven with DOUBLE baking sheets, that is not traditional but yeilds great results and gives you some "room for error" or adj if needed towards the end of baking. GLTA!

I Love Macarons / B00B2XPBLWSo, everyone else on earth has already said this about this book, but I'll add on to the pile: The pictures are pretty, the ideas are great, the recipes are flat-out wrong. I haven't had a chance to confirm that the recipes use too much egg-whites, but I wouldn't be surprised because our first batch was too runny. But! Everything plumped up and I even had pied-feet and was feeling great......until the oven burned the cookies like whoa, because 375 degrees fahrenheit for 15-18 minutes is going to practically set your cookies on fire. (Not really, but they WILL smell like burned popcorn.) That was quite the bummer and meant that I had to guesstimate how long to cook the next two trays, and it ended up being a bit of a mess.Then the icing. The recipe seems to be trying to get your sugar-water mixture to the soft ball candy stage, but 4 minutes in the microwave (which is the STARTING point given, with more time added "as needed") ended up in a caramel that was practically black. And subsequent tests with the microwave convinced me that the line between soft ball stage and hard thread stage is too fine to try to achieve in my microwave. So that's a huge disappointment.I think this book is pretty, the pictures are lovely, and in terms of talking you through the theory of macaroons and the available flavor combinations, there's a lot of good material here. But in terms of, you know, actually making the cookies, this book is worse than useless because unless you read the reviews, you'll go into this trusting the book and end up with burned cookies and burned sugar. A lot of effort with nothing to show for it.Two stars because no matter how pretty the book is, someone should have tested the recipes before publishing this edition. (Macaroon book, you had ONE JOB!)~ Ana Mardoll

I bought this book for my partner, along with Jill Colonna's 'Mad About Macarons' and the two books complement one another wonderfully. This one breaks the macaron-making process down into 23 individual steps, each with an accompanying picture. As well as covering equipment, flavours, and decoration, this book also has some unexpected and useful extras, such as a pictorial troubleshooting section, a gift-wrapping section, and of particular note, a selection of recipes to help you use up your extra unused egg yolks.While this book is excellent on its own, it works well in partnership with Jill Colonna's 'Mad About Macarons'. In combination, the process is covered in incredible detail, with two individual approaches that allow you to adapt one from the other if something isn't quite working for you. The two books also present you with a mind-boggling array of flavours and combinations to play with.

I'd wanted to make macarons for a while and looked up recipes on the internet. I didn't make any until I got this book and would never look for another recipe now. This book is great, a few standard recipes to choose from but then so many ideas for different flavors and fillings. A great book if you want to learn to make them!

Easy to understand, helpful tips and hints. Great if you want to improve your skills or learn new ones. The flavour combinations are interesting.

Lush

This book contained the recipes for a lot of different flavoured macarons and different flavoured fillings. There were many tips in the book also which I found useful, although I found that the one involving turning the bowl upside down totally got rid of the air I incorporated, giving me a gloopy mix that just ran out of the piping bag. Since the recipe for macarons use up egg whites only, I found the recipes at the end using egg yolks very thoughtful.