Happy Sunday Friends!

I hope you had a great week! It was wonderful jumping back into my kitchen this past week with a YouTube Live and a Macaron Class after a week of being away. Thank you for joining the live and thank you to those who took my class on Saturday! It was AMAZING to bake together.

More from Bake Toujours:

• No new YouTube live this week as usual, but we will have one on May 25th on Vegan Macarons!!
  • The next live will be my last live for awhile as I start to pack up my house and prepare to move at the end of July. How fun will it be to do a “First Bake” Live some time in the new kitchen?! I am looking forward to that—in fact, I wish I could just skip this whole moving stuff. 😆
• Last week’s YouTube Live was on Chocolate Macarons! The macarons turned out well and were pretty full as chocolate macarons tend to be.
  • This live sparked a lot of conversation about cocoa powder. What is it about cocoa powder that helps make full shells? What amount of fat does cocoa powder have? Do we use Dutch processed or Natural cocoa powder?
    • When it comes to fat content, use lower fat content and not high fat cocoa powders. In my edited chocolate macaron video I show the Callebaut cocoa powder that is lower in fat. During this live, I learned they also have a high fat content cocoa powder (photo below). I would suggest low fat cocoa powder around 10-12% fat instead of the high fat that is around 22-24%. If you bought high fat cocoa powder and you’re having wrinkled tops, I suggest decreasing the amount of cocoa powder you’re adding into the shell recipe by 5 grams or so (based off of a 100g liquid egg whites recipe), OR buying new cocoa powder that is lower in fat.
    • I am still uncertain as to why cocoa powder yields a fuller shell. As we said in the live, cocoa powder is acidic (anything below a pH of a 7 is considered an acid). I know acids such as vinegar or cream of tartar help stabilize meringues, so maybe the added acid into the batter helps the batter stay homogenous and not break down and allows for fuller shells as a result?! I am just throwing out ideas here. But it makes some sense, right? 😛
    • You can use natural or Dutch processed cocoa powders in macarons—Both work! In the picture below, I have natural and dutch processed powder in the same recipe. Usually if you’re using other leavenings like baking soda, you have to be careful with which type of cocoa powder is used, but with macarons we do not.

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I hope that helps shed some light on Chocolate macarons!! Thanks again for being an awesome community that encourages us all to dive deeper into the “why” certain things work and don’t work. Especially with macarons, the more we know, the better we can troubleshoot and succeed with these finicky, yet irresistible cookies!!

Have a wonderful rest of your Sunday my fellow bakers! Wishing you a joy-filled week ahead.

Happy Baking,

Nicole

Bake Toujours