Mad About Macarons: Make Macarons Like the French

I initially bought Macarons by Cecile Cannone. Please see my review for that book. Although the taste was wonderful, the presentation was off. My shells would never look perfect. The feet would never be perfect across all batches. They weren't round. The list goes on. So I moved to an intermediate learner book called Mad about Macarons! Here is what I have learned:Additional things I had to buy:- medium sieve (Williams Sonoma does not sell one with large enough holes to work. I had to go to Sur La Table and get this strange looking thing. A big short cylindrical metal thing with a wire mesh attached to one side. It cost about $40)- a hand spatula that is flat on one end and round on the other (again, only could find at Sur La Table. It cost $4)- a digital scale (I got it at Williams Sonoma. I have a spring weighted scale but that is in ounces. This book is all in grams. The digital scale really helped on that end. Think I paid $50)- bought a bigger Wilton frosting bag to put the shell batter inThings I stopped doing (that I had to do with the other book)- stopped having to put egg white powder in to take care of humidity problems. yay!- stopped having to worry about how I mix the batter- stopped having to put salt in the egg mix- stopped having to refrigerate my leftover almond meal and then put it in the oven pre-mixing to get the humidity out. Thank God!What is cool about this book:* it firmly recommends you sift your sugars, powdered sugar (which she calls icing sugar by the way), almond meal, cocoa powder if using, etc). I like it! I throw out my big almond chunks and although I had some initial heart ache about wasting expensive stuff, it really makes the mix look so soft when you are dry mixing it with your whisk!* in this book it states you can mix the liquid and dry mix together crazily and not worry about it. I was so scared of how to mix my batter before, I kind of like this method. Don't over mix though...I saw oil stains in my shells last time I did that.* tells you how to get perfect round macarons. Follow what it says. Let your tip rest on the cookie sheet and then put pressure on to build a circle. It really works! Do this at a 45 degree angle. Previously, I was doing a 90 degree angle and my shells were uncontrollable and not perfectly circle. Totally bugged me!* I like my new tools. They make everything easier. Love the hand spatula. Love the strange looking strainer. Love Love Love!* No need to open the oven sporadically to let the humidity out.* The recipe is better for the shell. I no longer have oil stains or cracked shells. My feet are perfect. I do not have to use two cookie sheets at once either (one to insulate the other). How do I do this? 1. my oven temp has to be at 300 degrees NO convection. The fan burns my shells on the side the airflow is going. 2. Cook for 10 minutes. Perfect.What I kind of don't like about this book:- where the heck do I get things like custard powder? It's in one of the recipes...still no clue how to find that easily. I think some other ingredients might be like this as well.- it doesn't have a troubleshooting section like the Macarons book has. Hence, I'm glad I bought both.- I would say that these recipes seem more like european desired flavors and the Macarons book is more the american flavor style. What I mean by that is the Macarons book has more things like chocolate coffee flavor, salty caramel on chocolate, etc. the flavors in this book seem more "exotic" but I haven't tried anything crazy yet because I needed to perfect my shells first.It took me about five batches to get the shell perfect with this book, but I never could do that with the other. I got frustrated. So now I use this one for shells but I mix recipes with the other. I'm glad I bought both. I would say this one is an absolute must if you want your shells to not only taste perfect, but look perfect for giving.Hope this helps!

*UPDATE* February 16, 2012My second batch made using this book turned out unmistakeably PERFECT. I whipped my egg whites better (as they should have been in the first place. I underestimated how much time it took to whip 150g of egg whites) to create a thicker batter which was necessary. I baked at 325F for 11 minutes and the result was just outstanding.*JANUARY REVIEW*I don't remember the first time I ever saw a Macaron. I didn't even taste one until a few weeks ago (and it was just a shell), but I'd been hunting for a good macaron book for awhile. After reading the reviews raving about this book, I decided to purchase it. And I was not disappointed!!Like some people, I was a little startled about all the metric measurements. Already having a food scale ($10 at Kohl's), I didn't see it as being a problem. And it's very easy to do a quick google search for conversation calculators!! I can't imagine giving this book a bad review because it uses the metric system. Macarons are a french dessert, there's no reason why this book should be specifically catering to Americans. The author also notes that ingredients are listed in grams because some measurements may be too small to measure in cups.Some of the ingredients were hard to find, but knowing your grocery store really helped. Castor sugar (note: NOT the same at icing/confectioner's sugar) can be found at Wegmans, while Almond flour and custard powder (used for a lot of the fillings) can be found at almost any grocery store. I had to make a few investments like sieves, scrapers, etc. but the outcome was completely worth it!With my very first batch I was so excited (like others) to see feet when I opened the oven!! I do not think I whipped my egg whites well enough, and I had to adjust my oven temperature to 325F (as opposed to the 320F/160C stated in the book) for the third cookie sheet. I was not surprised because the author mentioned that without a convection oven the temperature may have needed to be higher. My first two cookie sheets had gooey shells and were odd shaped because my cookie sheets were warped and made the batter run. I think my batter was also a little bit too thin as well. But after the temperature adjust I had some really beautiful macarons...on my FIRST try!!! I only ended up with 12 sandwiches total (out of about 30) but trial and error was really easy with this book. Everything was simple, spelled out, and had great photographs for comparison. The first filling I made was the lemon filling and it came out delicious and was super simple to make.I do not regret buying this book for any reason. While my first batch wasn't absolutely perfect, I was amazed at what I was able to do!! This is definitely the book you want to buy if you want to make your own parisian macarons. Out of all the other books on the market, this one has the best reviews and the greatest success stories. I would recommend this book to any baker. While the ingredients and supply list can be a little intimidating, the process of making macarons was a breeze. With only 12 successful macarons I am not discouraged; I am inspired and excited to try more. Jill Colonna has really hit it big with her passion for macarons, and will quickly turn any baking novice into a brilliant french pastry chef!!

Dear Sir, I’m very angry because I love this book very much. I got already hard copy. I bought one on kindle thinking easier to use when I want to make macaron. You can’t read anything on kindle, the letters are too small, Even with Magnifying glass you can’t read the words.No pages on recipe, you can’t go straight to the recipe. why sell on kindle if the format is not for kindle.

This review is for the Kindle edition only. The book is useless as it is almost impossible to read it. Because of the typeface chosen in the printed copy, it has not accurately mapped to the Kindle presentation. Unlike a PDF which would be more useful, in the kindle you can't resize photographs and as each page is in effect a graphic, the text is too small to read. In parts there are small pop-ups with an paragraph or two to help the reader, but they don't cover the whole book and reading it is slow and painful. Stick with the printed copy.

What a fantastic book! If ever a single bakery item needed its own recipe book, macaroons are it. This is definitely the answer to the prayers of people like me who have struggled and failed to bake those notoriously tricky French delicacies.This book contains a wealth of information from the origins of macaroons right through trouble shooting, stockists for ingredients and even ideas for what to do with all those egg yolks that you don't need.After a few sections of useful information such as how to store macaroons and fancy presentation methods, the book then gets into the recipes starting with a basic unflavoured recipe. It describes the recipe and methods with the sort of precision that is necessary to get good results, and gives additional helpful hints on things like aging the egg whites to get the best from them. The book then dives into the different flavoured recipes and wow - what a selection. Its goes through all the traditional recipes such as coffee, vanilla pistachio and rose, and then goes onto some more unusual ones like tiramisu and tutti frutti before going onto what the author calls "Mad Macs" aimed at the adventurous baker - these include flavours such as garden herbs, bloody mary, tikka macsala, beetroot and horseradish and even Thai green curry. The last set of recipes are all for macaroon based desserts which are particularly good for using up any "cosmetically challenged" macaroons that you might create by accident.All in all a brilliant book that I highly recommend.

On the strength of multiple recommendations on forums across the internet, I bought this book as a present for my partner alongside Hisako Ogita's 'I Love Macarons'. The process of making macarons isn't as extensively broken down here as it is in 'I Love Macarons', but it is written in enough detail to enable you to get a handle on it using this book alone. Also, this book has sections on how to smarten up your macarons for gifting purposes, an unexpected but worthwhile addition. The selection of flavour recipes covered is enormous, ranging from classics such as pistachio, chocolate, or lemon, to the opposite end of the spectrum (Cranachan macaron, anyone?).The book alone is a worthwhile addition to any baker's shelf, but is at its best when combined with the aforementioned 'I Love Macarons', as both books approach macaron making in slightly different ways and having both is like having two different teachers with different but equally right ideas.

Follow Jill's instructions and you won't go far wrong. These are tricky little Devils to make, my first batch were OK, 2nd batch good, 3rd batch trying the Italian method ( not in this book) were rubbish so went back to Jill's book and 4th batch perfect. She has also included amounts for smaller batches which saves you working it out for yourself. Some nice recipes, with pictures. A good introduction to the world of macarons.