Lemon Macarons

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These sweet and tart lemon macarons are filled with a tangy lemon buttercream. The lemon French macarons feature actual lemon zest as well as lemon extract to bring all the flavor without weighing down the iconic light and airy macaron texture.

Macarons have long been on my list of things to tackle, but I’d always been intimidated by their finicky nature and wanted to start with as much knowledge of them before I actually put my hands on some ingredients and batter.

Is that a weird approach? Maybe. But I am here to help guide you through making macarons as a fellow amateur.

Because here’s the thing– I am absolutely not a pro at these. I probably never will be. But I do know some folks who are, and I picked the heck out of their brains before diving in head first to these bad boys.

And how that works out well for you is that I am putting all of my best resources in this post for you so that you, too, can start with as much knowledge as possible before getting down to it.

Perhaps you’re here and you’ve already got a great knowledge of the how-tos of macarons, and that’s great. Please enjoy this sweet and tart lemon macaron recipe and let me know how you liked it!

If you’re one of my readers who has been egging me on to learn and share a macaron technique, I’ve got you! Let’s do this!

I begin my meringue by creating a double boiler to heat the egg whites and sugar. Not only does this warm up the egg whites (cold egg whites are quite difficult to beat to peaks), but it also dissolves the sugar a little more quickly.

This process only takes about 2 minutes. You’re looking for a white and frothy mixture, and when you dip your pointer finger in, you should be able to rub it against your thumb without feeling any sugar granules.

This is a crucial step in laying the foundation for macarons. I royally screwed up my first batch by only taking my meringue to medium peaks.

However, once you do reach medium peaks, it’s safe to add your lemon extract and yellow gel coloring.

You don’t want to add it at the beginning of whipping because you don’t want anything interfering with that reaction. Once medium peaks are present, it’s safe for adding just this tiny extra bit of liquid.

For these lemon macarons, you’ll also add your lemon zest in this step and sift with everything else. Sifting your lemon zest assures any larger pieces don’t make their way through. The dry ingredients must be clump-free!

Don’t worry, I have a video (not my own– I watched this at least 5x before starting) for this part, but here are the basic stages:

You’ll be working in the bowl that’s holding your meringue, which is now at stiff peaks.

Add half of the dry ingredients to the entire meringue mixture, then fold (do not stir) them in.

Add the rest of the dry ingredients, and continue to fold.

Once all of the dry ingredients have been incorporated, begin pushing some of the air out of the batter (this is where the video becomes incredibly helpful– I could not understand what “drag the batter around the bowl” meant until I saw it).

The video I’ve linked uses a “ribbon” method, but it looks for the same thing– you want to be able to draw a figure 8 into the batter two or three times without the batter breaking, and then watch for it to sink into itself after about 20 seconds.

Longer than this, and your batter still has a little too much air in it. Any shorter and you’ve pushed out too much air and ruined your batter.

This is so sad, and something I actually did with my third batch.

The video I linked shows testing the batter, determining it needs more air pushed out, doing so, and then landing on the perfect consistency.

I used a template from my friend Phillip at Southern Fatty. I printed out two sheets, and folded over the shorter sides to connect them and make one long template that fit my baking sheet perfectly.

Once you’ve piped, you can pull the template out from under your baking mat. Just don’t forget to pull it out from under the baking mat on your second baking sheet before putting it in the oven (I almost did this so many times).

You’ll rap your baking sheet onto the counter a few times. As you do this, you’ll see little bubbles rise to the top of some of your mounds of batter. This step removes any extra air trapped inside those rounds.

If any of the bubbles don’t pop, feel free to carefully prick them with a toothpick.

This skin is also what allows your baked macarons to develop the iconic feet. The perfect balance of moisture and skin = perfect feet. If you’re interested in reading about my troubleshooting, batch #2 is the one that proved how necessary this perfect balance actually is.

Once all of these components have come together in perfect harmony, beautiful little macarons will await you when you open your oven to greet them with an anxious and hopeful smile.

You can test for skin by gently running your finger over a mound of batter. Your finger shouldn’t stick and it shouldn’t disturb the mound.

If there is no skin present after 30 minutes, it’s fine to wait longer. Humidity, temperature, or Mercury in or out of retrograde can affect macaron skin. As one of my pros told me “the skin tells you when it’s time to bake.”

So take more rest/drying time if the skin tells you to.

Before I dove in head first to French macarons, I studied a few different techniques. I settled on the Swiss meringue method (the cooking of the egg whites and sugar) because it sounded easier than others, and it used methods that I was very familiar with.

I also set the bar very low for expectations. I built in room for failing, knowing it was unlikely I would nail the perfect macaron on the first try, and I’m really glad I did that.

I was disappointed in my first three attempts at these lemon macarons, but I wasn’t devastated. I did some troubleshooting by picking the brains of the people I knew had a lot of experience, and I stuck with the same method and general recipe so as not to change too many variables from batch to batch so I could truly pinpoint what I needed to work on.

My first batch was horrible. I essentially made lemon pancakes. With teeny macaron feet. FAIL.

I also forgot to add salt, so they were pretty sweet, but overall still super delish and we ate them all.

My second batch was strange– I abandoned a weird technique I thought sounded like an “easier” method that produced the lemon pancakes and it resulted in 75% of a batch of deflated macaron shells and 25% beautiful shells with no feet. Getting somewhere but still a fail.

Oh, I also over-salted that recipe, so, slightly yucky though not terrible. We still ate all of them.

This is the point at which I started to troubleshoot big time with friends. It was very clear to me after chatting with others that my batter had too much moisture.

So for the third batch, I reduced my egg whites, felt like I had a beautiful batter, and wound up with what my neighbors deemed “lemon ravioli.” But we had some feet!! So we were getting somewhere further. I just deflated my batter too much (my figure 8 test disappeared in about 12 seconds, so it was too thin, but I piped it anyway).

These were perfectly salted, in fact, so I landed on the perfect combination of ingredients.

It turns out that the FOURTH time was the ticket. I had the proper amount of moisture, the ideal balance of sweet/tart/salt, and absolutely gorgeous macaron shells with cute little feet.

I had about 35 shells and only a handful had cracked tops. This was a complete and total success, so that recipe, those photos, and that particular method will be what I go to forever more.

This is what works for me, and while it should work for you, as I said earlier, this is just one of those things in life that maybe won’t. Though I urge you to try. Because the satisfaction of nailing the perfect macaron is a better feeling than I thought it would be.

FILL THE MACARONS WITH WHATEVER YOU LIKE

I filled these particular lemon macarons with my favorite lemon buttercream. This lemon buttercream originally appeared on my blog atop my blueberry lemon cupcakes, and you’ll need 1/4 of that recipe for the amount of buttercream needed to fill these macarons. This is the buttercream you’ll find in the recipe below.

If you’re feeling jazzy, I have a homemade lemon curd filling recipe that would go perfectly with these cuties.

You can use it as is, or you can pipe a small circle of buttercream on a macaron shell before filling that circle with the curd. Either method works, but curd can be a little runny at times, so it’s safest to make a well.

YOU CAN DO THIS!

While these definitely weren’t easy by any means, they were obviously not impossible. And while I do have a very solid base of baking skills, this was the first time I’ve ever attempted any kind of meringue. So it was basically starting from scratch and learning everything!

If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at this, now is the time. I’ve broken it down for you in an easy-to-follow manner without a bunch of strict rules (some people swear by aged egg whites ONLY, some swear by baking at a way lower temperature and then increasing it, and some swear by rotating pans in the oven…).

While the whole macaron method does have some specific requirements, I hope I’ve removed some of the scary parts and shown you that you can do this. While I may not be a TOTAL pro (yet?!), I still managed to make some pretty awesome macs.

And I know that you can, too. You’ve got this.