The Christmas cookie revamped! Impress your family, friends, and Secret Santa with your fancy yet easy-to-make Parisian treats with a Christmas peppermint twist! Make sure to do a few trial runs until you achieve the perfect consistency for the cookie portion of the macaroon, because it can be a bit tricky.
**Macaroons only require a few ingredients and can be made dairy-free and gluten-free depending on the toppings and fillings used.**
What you’ll need:
Food processor
2 cookie sheets
1 large zip-lock bag
Parchment paper
Mixer
Food ingredients:
1 cup of confectioners sugar
¾ cup of almond flour can be bought in pre-ground bags at certain food stores or use a food processor to grind your own raw, unsalted almonds)
2 large egg whites (at room temperature)
1 pinch of cream of tartar
1/4 cup of superfine white sugar
1 teaspoon of peppermint extract
5 drops of red food dye
dark chocolate (for melting)
3 crushed candy canes
Nutella
How to make it:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit.
Pulse confectioners’ sugar and almond flour in a food processor until completely combined. Make sure there are no clumps, sift the mixture. Put mixture into a medium bowl.
Whisk egg whites in a mixer on medium speed until foamy. Add cream of tartar and whisk until peaks form. Reduce the speed and slowly add in the sugar. Once sugar is added, turn the speed back up to high until peaks form again.
Slowly mix in the flour mixture into the egg-white mixture and fold until the consistency is shiny and clump-free, while putting in the red food dye drops and the teaspoon of peppermint extract
Pour your batter into the Ziploc bag and cut a small hole big enough for the batter to come out easily but controllably.
Place parchment paper onto cookie sheets and squeeze the batter onto the pans in desirable size (usually not bigger than an inch) and have an inch of space between each macaroon half. **While piping the batter out make a circular motion, do not make a peak or elevated swirl
Let the macarons stay on their pans for 15 minutes before putting in the oven (if the batter is running do not attempt baking—its hopeless at this point)
Reduce the oven temp to 325 degrees fahrenehit and bake for about 10 minutes, while keeping an eye on the tray and turning it at 5 minutes. (One pan at a time)
For filling, put a dollop of Nutella and make a sandwich with the cookies
Drizzle the melted dark chocolate decoratively over the macaroons, and sprinkle the crushed candy cane onto the chocolate as it hardens.
ENJOY!