You've made some macaron batter, now what? How do you get the basically perfect circles so that you can match two shells and sandwich them around your delicious filling of choice?
Here are some tips that I give to anyone about what works for me:
Hold your bag so that there is no "loose" space, that will give you control over the flow. I twist the end of my bag to "lock" it closed, hold the bag with your dominate hand at the top of the "lock" to control the pressure.
For each shell, hold the bag straight up and down, 90 degrees or perpendicular to the surface (you can use parchment paper, or a silicone baking mat, both have befits to be discussed in a future post, I'm sure). Piping at an angle can encourage lopsided "feet" the ruffled edges of each shell, to help avoid that pipe straight up and down.
You are not trying go around the edge of your template in a circle (no poop emoji or soft-serve swirl), you want to keep the tip centered and a little off from the surface - too close and the batter will fan out, too far away and it'll make a weird mound.
Squeeze with pressure until you've just about filled the template, stop squeezing and then gently "flick" and break the flow of batter.
Use a template! I usually make mine and print out two 8.5inch by 11inch pages and they slightly overlap to fill a standard "half-size" baking tray. If you want somewhere to start for a good standard size macaron, I have a free template on this blog post.
Other points of concern when piping macarons has to do with having the "right" batter consistency, which I won't cover in detail here but plan to do another post soon!
Here is a video that starts in real time and then gets sped up of piping a tray of purple shells that will end up being filled with mixed berries and cream filling, yum! Also, I used a variety of powdered food colors from The Sugar Art, and Wilton tip 1A. Just starting out? I recommend Wilton tip 12 for more control and smaller batch sizes.
Thank you for reading and watching!
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