Vegan Italian Macarons with Aquafaba (2024)

After over a year of trying to perfect the vegan macaron, going through countless recipes and recipe variations, I’ve finally gotten them figured out! And funny enough, it was by jumping off of the very first recipe I had ever tried and making some tweaks.

So first off, I want to thank Jasmine Lukuku over at The Blenderist for figuring her recipe out and sharing it with the world. If you want to check it out, it’s here and it’s wonderful if you’re starting.

It made some nice macs for me – better than any other published recipe I tried, but I couldn’t get them absolutely perfect in my climate. And I need perfect. I want my vegan goodies to be so unbelievably great that even non-vegans and non-allergic people prefer them over the conventional version. So I set out to do that. And this recipe is the result.

If you don’t want to see the step by steps or photos, and don’t care to read my explanations for everything, go ahead and click here to skip down to the recipe card below. Otherwise – buckle up for a wild and crazy ride!

CHAPTER ONE: WHAT IS A MACARON?

First off, an explanation of what a macaron is and what a macaron isn’t. A macaron is a little cookie made from meringue (traditionally, whipped egg whites and sugar) and almond flour.

There are three varieties of macaron: Italian, French, and Swiss. They are called as such based on what type of meringue is used. Italian meringue adds molten sugar to fluffed egg whites (or in our case, aquafaba fluff). French meringue adds raw sugar into the fluff. And Swiss, the least used method, melts the sugar together with egg whites over a double boiler, and then whips them up together.

No matter the meringue method used, they turn out almost the same – those who don’t make or obsess over macarons would never be able to tell the difference. That said, Italian macarons seem to be the most stable and the easiest to get right for beginners, so that’s where I’m starting in the blog.

Now, what are they like? I think of the texture as being a bit like a Milky Way candy bar: it has a crisp (but not hard) shell that breaks easily, melts in your mouth, but the whole cookie still has a good bit of chew to it. They are extraordinarily sweet, and the shells can be flavored but usually it’s the filling that gets the flavor and the shells are left to be “plain” sweet almond to compliment the filling.

Macarons also have iconic “feet” – a cute little ruffle along the bottom of the cookie that is formed as steam builds up inside of it during baking, causing it to rise up from the baking tray. The space between the cookie shell and the tray fills in with the raw batter which bubbles from the heat and makes the adorable little frilly feet everyone who makes macarons desperately craves and seeks out in their confections.

Macarons are not macaroons. Macaroons are also made with meringue, but rather than being mixed with almond flour, macaroon meringue is mixed with shredded coconut. Then they are usually dipped in and/or drizzled with chocolate.

Macaroons are easy. Macarons are not. Macarons are jerks who don’t like to play nice and you should not feel bad if your first batch does not turn out. Or your second. Or your eleventy sixteenth. That’s just the way this cookie crumbles (or melts, or explodes, or burns, or crystallizes, or implodes, or any other manner of destruction which they might dream up).

I’m hopeful that this guide will help you to succeed right off the bat. But that’s all I can guarantee: that I’m hopeful. I’m going to try to outline my exact process and ingredients, and hopefully it will help you to make beautiful macarons much sooner than a year after you first set out to do it. If not, don’t give up – change up your oven temp, try different brands of ingredients, search the internet for answers. Join my vegan macaron group on Facebook. Feel free to even send me a message to help troubleshoot if they’re really getting to you. We will get you making gorgeous vegan macarons!

CHAPTER TWO: OVERVIEW OF INGREDIENTS

Macarons are, at their most basic level, three ingredients: almonds, sugar, and egg whites (aquafaba, in our case). Anything else extra is added to make the process easier and give more consistent results.

My recipe, adapted from that of The Blenderist, consists of almond flour, powdered sugar with tapioca starch added, sugar, garbanzo bean (chickpea) aquafaba, cream of tartar, and/or vinegar. Gel or powder food coloring may also be used.

These are the exact brands I use in case you want to replicate what I do to the T:

• Almond flour: Bob’s Red Mill superfine, blanched [UPDATE: I now use Blue Diamond almond flour, as that’s what Sam’s Club carries. It has worked marvelously!]

• Powdered sugar: H-E-B Organics

• Sugar: Zulka

• Garbanzo beans: Walmart’s Great Value organic

• Cream of Tartar: McCormick

• Vinegar: whatever store brand I have

• Food color: Some of my favorite vegan food coloring options are AmeriColor gels, ProGels, and Artisan Accents gels. Ultimate Baker has an amazing line of powdered colors that are both vegan and all natural, if you prefer the natural route! Make sure you use gels or powders though, not liquid.

As far as the almond flour goes, I have also heard great things about Costco’s Kirkland brand flour. I would not recommend Nature’s Eats brand as it has large pieces and doesn’t pass through the sieve well. I also don’t recommend Blue Diamond brand because it is quite oily and will result in splotchy, fragile macarons. [UPDATE: I now use Blue Diamond and have been having fantastic results!]

For powdered sugar, if you’re not fortunate enough to live in Texas and have an H-E-B nearby, Wholesome 365 has an identical organic powdered sugar with tapioca starch added. If you don’t need a vegan sugar, any powdered sugar should work – whether it has corn starch, tapioca starch, or no starch at all.

The same goes for the granulated sugar; I use Zulka because it is made without bone char. If you’re not concerned about bone char use in your sugar, any granulated sugar should work fine.

For your aquafaba (aquafaba is the cooking liquid from beans – NOT the soaking liquid. It can either be the broth from homemade beans, or be poured from a can of beans) any canned or homemade aquafaba should work. As long as you’ve whipped it up successfully before, consider it a worthy candidate for macarons. I’ve also never noticed a difference in results from salted vs unsalted. I use the Great Value organic garbanzos because they have pop-tops and are easier for me to open.

As far as your cream of tartar and vinegar go, they are acids and help to stabilize the meringue. I don’t think the brand matters at all here, I just grab whatever is easiest to reach and is the cheapest. If you can’t find cream of tartar, then just use vinegar in its place. We will also use the vinegar to wipe out our mixing bowl which will help with the fluffing process.

CHAPTER THREE: OVERVIEW OF SUPPLIES

Check out my Amazon Shop to browse all the ingredients and supplies I actually use and recommend.

First of all, you need an oven. You don’t need a fancy one, but you do need one that can hold a consistent temperature. Make sure you’ve tested the internal temperature with a reliable oven thermometer (here’s one that’s NSF certified in case you need that). Macarons will fail if the temperature is even two degrees one way or another; it needs to be exact and it needs to be consistent. My oven offers both conventional and convection baking. For my macarons, I use the conventional setting – NOT the convection/fan setting. I’m working on figuring out what temp convection needs to be on in order for the macs to turn out, but I haven’t gotten it yet. I will update once I do. The heat from my oven also comes from the bottom coils.

Second, a working stovetop.

Third of all, you need a mixer with a whisk attachment. I recommend having a stand mixer because it’s going to be going for a loooooong while. I have two KitchenAid stand mixers: a smaller tilt-head mixer and a larger Professional Series mixer with a lever to raise and lower the bowl. Unless you’re going to be making a double batch, I highly recommend using the smaller mixer. While it’s possible to use the larger one, the whisk has a harder time reaching the aquafaba to whip it up. If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can totally use a handheld mixer! Just expect to be standing there holding it for a while.

You absolutely need a kitchen scale that weighs grams.

A large metal or glass mixing bowl.

A fine mesh sieve. I use metal, and have never had luck with the plastic ones.

A silicone spatula.

A small, very clean saucepan.

A food thermometer that goes up to at least 400°F. I have a thermometer with a probe that connects to a timer. I can set a target temperature and it will alert me when it reaches it. I got it for about $15 at my local grocery store, and I highly recommend it because you can walk away from the stove and focus on other things without worrying about burning your sugar. A conventional candy thermometer will work just fine, however.

Next, you need piping bags. I love my tipless bags I grab from Amazon, but any piping bags will do. These are the bags I use:

Mseeur 200 Pcs Disposable Cream Pastry Bag

As far as tips go, yes I use them. With my tipless bags. I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but as I said earlier – I want perfect macs, and to get those perfect circles I need to use tips. I use Wilton 10 and 12. These are smaller than most people use but I’ve found the smaller the tip, the fewer bubbles I get in my macarons. If you don’t want to use tips, feel free to snip the bags so you have an opening about 3/8 to 1/2″ wide. If you want to use tips, grab a few here:

Wilton 12 Round Decorating Tip

A tall glass with a wide mouth. This will help you fill your piping bags with batter.

Light colored aluminum cookie sheets or baking pans. I have commercial half sheet pans that I bought at Sam’s Club. You can use any light colored aluminum pans you have, though. I’ve even used upside down cake pans! These are the types of pans I use:

Nordicware Natural Aluminum Commercial Baker’s Half Sheet (2 Pack), Silver

Silicone mats or parchment paper to line your baking pans with. I recommend silicone mats. Parchment paper will cause your macarons to cook into oblong shapes with wrinkled bottoms. They will be just as delicious, but not perfect. You may also have to adjust your cooking time with parchment since the macarons will cook quicker and burn easier. Mats are relatively cheap on Amazon. The ones I use are these:

Macaron Silicone Baking Mat – Set of 2

A cooling rack.

And finally, probably the most important supply: Patience. A lot of it. Sorry I don’t have an Amazon link for that. 😉

CHAPTER FOUR: PREP

1) Reducing your aquafaba:

The first thing you need to do is prep your aquafaba. If you’re using canned beans, give them a quick shake to distribute all the proteins first. Drain the beans and add the liquid to a saucepan. If you’re using homemade, you need at least 225ml. I don’t like to be exact here though, and usually make a big batch so I don’t have to prep aquafaba every time I make macarons. All we are going to do here is reduce our aquafaba by about a third. I eyeball it. It’s totally fine if you do, too. I do it on a low simmer so that it doesn’t boil up and over. That cleanup is not fun.

Also, if your reduced aquafaba isn’t gelatinous, that’s totally fine! It won’t be unless you refrigerate it (which I don’t do before I use it. It just use it!). I refrigerate the leftover aquafaba if I’m going to be making more macs in the next couple of days, otherwise I freeze it.

2) Cleaning your mixing bowl and whisk:

Even the smallest speck of grease or fat of any kind will kill your meringue before it even starts. To prevent this, make sure you wash them really well in hot water with a good lathering dish soap. Dry them with a clean paper towel, and then pour about a teaspoon of vinegar into the bowl. Using your paper towel, wipe the vinegar all over the inside of the bowl and then use the same paper towel to wipe down the tines of your whisk. It’s also a good idea to wipe down your silicone mats with your vinegar, too.

3) Having all your supplies at hand:

Once you get started with the recipe, you need everything at arm’s length and ready to go. This isn’t something you can walk away from for long. Make sure all the dishes you’ll need are washed and dry and that you have all the ingredients you’ll be using.

CHAPTER FIVE: MAKE THE MACARONS!

Ingredients:

150g reduced aquafaba
200g granulated sugar
1/4c water
200g powdered sugar
200g almond flour
1/4 tsp cream of tartar OR 1 tsp vinegar

Method:

1) Preheat your oven to 310°F if you’re using silicon mats, 300°F if you’re using parchment paper.

2) Add 75g of reduced aquafaba to your mixer’s bowl along with your cream of tartar or vinegar. Turn the mixer up to medium high speed. You want to get it to soft peaks. That means that when you lift the whisk out of the fluff, it forms little mountains that fall over and wiggle a lot. They remind me of the waves in Japanese art.

3) While your fluff is fluffing, pour your granulated sugar into your clean saucepan along with 1/4 cup of water and put it over medium low heat. Do not stir. Add your thermometer – making sure the actual thermometer doesn’t touch the bottom of the pan but sits in the middle of your sugar mixture. We want to bring this to 245°F. I set my target temp for 225°F so that I can check my aquafaba fluff to see if it’s at soft peaks yet. If it’s not, I turn the heat down to low under the sugar and kick the mixer speed up by one.

4) While waiting on all of this to happen, measure out your dry ingredients. Use your spatula to push 200g of powdered sugar and 200g of almond flour through your sieve into a large mixing bowl.

200g of powdered sugar. (ok, 201. whatever.)

See Also

Tahini Date Freezer Cups

200g of almond flour.

Mixed together.

4) Once your sugar reaches 245°F, take it to your fluff and slowly pour it in while the mixer is on medium. Don’t worry about the sugar that sticks to the sides of the bowl. Turn the mixer back up to medium high and let it go until the outside of the bowl feels cool to the touch. At this point, the meringue should be glossy and white and it will be ribbony and sticky when you lift the whisk out of it.

5) Pour in the remaining 75g of aquafaba into the dry mix and combine it well. Congratulations, you’ve just made marzipan!

75g of reduced aquafaba added to the dry mix.

We now have almond paste! AKA marzipan!

6) Remove the mixer bowl, and using your spatula move 1/2 of the meringue into your marzipan, being careful not to grab any of the candied sugar on the sides of the bowl. Stir it until it’s mixed well and you don’t see any white meringue or chunks of marzipan.

7) Now is the part where you need to be careful. The macaronage. Macaronage is the careful folding of the meringue into your almond mixture so that we can knock out just enough air to form a perfect macaron batter.

Add the rest of your meringue into your almond mixture – again, being careful not to grab any of the candy bits on the side of the bowl. Tilt your bowl 3/4 on its side so that the batter slides down from the bottom of the bowl and rests along the side. This way, gravity is going to help us with the folding.

Use your spatula to scrape along from the top of the bowl, around the side, around the bottom, and back up the other side to the top of the the bowl. You should be cleanly picking up the whole mixture and folding it over onto itself. Do this gently until everything is incorporated. The batter should be relatively thick at this point. If you want to add gel color, you can do it now. You can add up to a teaspoon and it shouldn’t affect the macarons.

Now, alternate between smushing the batter along the sides of the bowl and scraping and folding – slowly and gently, until you can lift the batter with the spatula and draw a figure 8 with the batter that falls off. Once you can do this, STOP. Your batter is done. Err on the side of undermixed if you’re not sure.

8) Line a tall glass with your prepared piping bag/tip (just like a bag in a trash can). If using a tip, I like to twist the bag just above the tip and smush the twist down into the tip. This prevents batter from leaking out. Pour your batter into the bag and either twist or tie it closed. There should be enough batter to fill the bag two or three times. Cover what’s left in the bowl so that it doesn’t dry out.

9) Grab your prepped baking pan lined with a silicone mat or parchment (but remember that with parchment the cookies won’t come out as perfect circles).

Holding the piping bag perfectly perpendicular (up and down) to the baking pan, gently squeeze until you’ve made a circle about an inch in diameter. Stop squeezing, and quickly make a small circle with the piping tip as you lift it. This will prevent your macarons from having nipples.

Pipe your next macaron about 2.5″ from your first one. Continue until you’ve filled your tray.

10) Now comes the fun part! You’re going to slam the tray down on a flat surface to bring all the bubbles up and out of your macs. I like to do it two or three times on one side of the tray, rotate, another two or three times, rotate, so on and so forth until I feel like the bubbles are all gone. I probably hit the tray around 20-30 times. If you have stubborn bubbles, you can pop them with a toothpick, clean sewing needle, or cookie scribe.

11) Once you’re done slamming the tray and popping bubbles, set your tray on a flat surface and wait for the macarons to form a dry skin. This is imperative because without the skin, the macarons will probably explode in the oven. This skin keeps all the steam inside the cookie and allows them to lift and form feet. I like to set mine on the (now cool) stovetop with the exhaust fan running above them.

12) Once you see that the cookies are no longer shiny and you can lightly run your finger along the surface without it sticking to you, set a timer for 20 minutes. Once that goes off, put your cookies into the oven on the lowest rack (if using parchment, you may need to use the middle rack). Set another 20 minute timer (22 if you’re using parchment).

Now sit impatiently outside of your oven, staring into its belly hoping and praying that your macs form feet (around 6-7 minutes is when this should happen) and that they don’t explode. If your oven has hot spots, you may want to rotate your tray at about 12 minutes.

At 20 minutes, the feet should appear dry (no longer shiny) and if you give one a gentle poke with your finger, it shouldn’t jiggle.

13) Pull the tray out and set it on a cooling rack. Do not attempt to remove your macarons yet! Wait until they are totally cool, and they should peel right off. If they don’t, pop the tray in the freezer for 3-5 minutes and then they will.

14) Find matching pairs and fill with whatever your heart desires – buttercream and ganache are the most common fillings. I’m also a fan of cookie butter. If you plan on using something a bit more wet like jam or curd, form a barrier on the cookie with some buttercream or chocolate first so that it doesn’t make the macaron soggy. Put into an airtight container and IF YOU CAN, place them into the fridge for at least 24 hours before enjoying. This process is called maturation and it helps to fill hollow spaces in the shell and lets all the flavors mingle and marry and become infinitely yummier.

If you can’t wait that long, they’re perfectly yummy straight away though.

This recipe makes between 70 and 85 shells depending on how large you pipe them. They can be put into an airtight container and refrigerated up to a week and frozen for up to six months.

Three Hour Video Tutorial:

Join me as I make a batch of macarons, from beginning to end.

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