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Before you start, get all of your ingredients ready.
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Prepare a large piping bag, fitted with a large round tip.
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Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon mat.
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Under my parchment, I put a layout with my cactus that you can find above on the post.
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Measure out all of your ingredients.
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Now you can finally start.
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Place egg whites and granulated sugar in a heat proof bowl or in a double boiler. Over a pan of simmering water, whisk the whites and sugar until frothy and sugar completely melted. It will take a couple minutes.
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Make sure the bottom of the bowl isn’t touching the simmering water.
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Transfer mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer. (I use my kitchenAid bowl when doing this, because it makes it easier)
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With the whisk attachment, whisk mixture on high speed for a few minutes until stiff peaks are formed.
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Best way to check this is to keep your eye on the whites. Once they get glossy and you start seeing streaks formed by the whisk, it might be time to stop.
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You don’t want to overbeat the mixture at this point, because you don’t want to add too much air to it. Just whisk until stiff peaks have formed.
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Sift powdered sugar, almond flour and matcha together.
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Pour into stiff whites.
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Start folding gently forming a letter J with a spatula.
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It’s time to stop folding when the batter is glossy and has a thick and flowing consistency. There are several ways to test this, and you might have to have a couple failed batches before you get this right.
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First, grab a spatula full of batter and pull it up at a 90 degree angle on top of the bowl, then you start drawing a figure 8 in the air with the dripping batter. And if you can draw a few number 8s with the flowing batter, without having it break apart, that means your batter is probably ready, or close to being ready.
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Then, I grab a teaspoon of batter and spoon onto my parchment paper or silicon mat.
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If the batter stays stiff and doesn’t spread out a bit, I start folding a little bit more, about 3 folds.
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Test again.
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Once the batter spreads out a bit and starts to look glossy on the parchment paper, I transfer my mixture to the piping bag.
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You don’t want your batter to be too runny either. So be careful not to overmix. It’s always best to undermix and test several times until the proper consistency has been achieved.
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This is the most important part about making macarons in my opinion.
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To pipe the cactus macarons I used two different tips, a round Wilton 12, and a round Wilton 2A. The large tip (the 2A) I used to pipe the body of the cactus, and the smaller one (tip 12) I used to pipe the arms.
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When you pipe the macarons, you will need to use a toothpick to spread the batter around to fit the whole cactus shape. Check the post above for picture instructions.
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Once you’ve piped as many cactus macarons as you can, bang the trays against the counter a few times each. This will release air bubbles that are in the batter and prevent your macaron shells from cracking.
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Let your trays sit for a while so the shells will dry out a little bit. I usually leave about 20-40 minutes, depending on how humid the day is. You’ll know they’re ready when you gently touch the surface of a macaron and it seems dry.
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Pre-heat the oven to 325F.
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Bake one tray at a time.
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Bake for 4 minutes, rotate tray.
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Bake for 4 more minutes, check if it needs to be rotated again. You will know if it needs to be rotated again depending on how the macarons are baking. Take a look at them, if one side seems taller then the other, maybe you have to rotate the tray again.
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Bake for around 2-4 more minutes. Really keep an eye out, not to overbake.
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When baked, the macarons will have a deeper color and formed feet.
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Remove from the oven and bake the other tray.
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Let the macarons cool down before proceeding with the filling.
