Homemade Lemon Macarons

"Cooking Is Like Love: It Should Be Entered Into With Abandon Or Not At All "

Harriet Van Horne

One of my favorite passions is cooking. My kids put up with Sunday dinners with me still because I like to explore. To me, cooking is like painting. You start with that blank canvas. You know the direction you want to take your painting (a mural, a bowl of fruit, your neighbor’s crazy cat) and you start painting. Same with cooking. You know you want to make Italian, or Chinese or a Mimosa-laden brunch, but what colors do you use? Asparagus or Broccoli, Feta or Bleu, Ribeye or Fillet. It sounds crazy but that’s fun for me.

So my wonderful daughter asked me to do her Bridal Brunch the day before her wedding. She has a lot of wonderful girlfriends, but with sheer numbers comes every taste and allergy in the world. We unanimously decided that we should try to make macrons. Yes, they are hard. We even decided to make our own almond flour. I wouldn’t recommend that. Needless to say they didn’t look like anything close to a macaron but man, were they tasty.

So that gave me the bug. Macarons are like that blank canvas…you can do any combination and paint any picture. I struggled to determine what flavor combination I wanted to try and then it hit me. My mom was one of the strongest influences in my life and I miss her. One of her favorite things in the whole world was lemons. Our running joke was that she had a little tea with her lemon juice. She used lemons in savory and sweet dishes and I grew to love them as well. I inherited her lemon tree when she passed and ironically, this year it produced lemons. In a way to honor her and use those beautiful lemons, I wanted to make something she’d love. So I decided to make lemon meringue pie macarons.

I started with a standard macaron recipe and added lemon juice and lemon zest.

¾ cup almond flour

1 cup powdered sugar

2 large egg whites

¼ cup granulated sugar

½ tsp lemon juice

1 tsp lemon zest

Prior to starting, I learned a few things. I read that if you take your separated egg whites and store them in a bowl in the fridge 1-2 days before you make the macarons…they dry out and that improves the height and foot of the macaron. Secondly, grinding the flour and powdered sugar together in a food processor and sifting removes any clumps and makes a finer batter. Finally, use a silicone macaron baking mat. They aren’t that expensive and they will keep the macarons the right size and distance from one another.

Lemon Macarons

1. Preheat oven to 325F.

2. Grind the flour and powdered sugar together in a food processor to a fine powder. Sift through a fine mesh sieve.

3. In a second bowl, beat the egg whites to a soft peak. Add the granulated sugar and beat until stiff.

4. Add the lemon juice and lemon zest and beat an additional 30 seconds.

5. Hand fold the flour and powdered sugar until just smooth.

6. Fill a pastry bag with a wide tip with the macaron batter.

7. Place a silicone macaron baking mat onto a sheet pan and pipe the batter into the pre-marked areas.

8. Tap the sheet pan to remove any air bubbles. Let the pan sit at room temperature for 30 minutes to 1 hour until a skin forms.

9. Bake for 12-15 minutes until the cookies look just set. If they do not come off of the baking sheet easily then add a minute before removing.

10. Cool for 5-10 minutes then move to a wire rack for complete cooling.

It went well and I even got the feet. I almost cried.

Now for the filling. Since I wanted to make lemon meringue pie…I figured the best thing to make was a Swiss meringue buttercream, and add lemon curd and lemon zest. Swiss meringue…lemon meringue…it was calling me.

A standard Swiss meringue uses egg whites, granulated sugar, salt, and butter. I found a great one here livforcake.com. Of course, me being me…I altered it. After the buttercream was whipped and perfect, I added lemon curd.

Lemon curd is easy to make and tastes much better than bottled. AND you have plenty of egg yolks left over from the macarons and buttercream. Win-win.

In a double boiler, whisk egg yolks, granulated sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice and salt until mixture is thick. Remove from heat and add butter. So good. A good recipe is here: Sallysbakingaddiction.com.

For my first attempt...they weren’t half bad. And like I said, I got feet!!! Amazing what excites you these days. They were delicious. Did I miss my mom still? Of course. Do I think Mom would have loved these? I hope so. I love you, Mom!