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Cover 3 baking sheets with baking paper. If you want regular shaped macarons, you can draw circles on a 4th sheet (I used a 1.5 inches – 5 cm vitamin bottle cap as a guide to draw the circles).

Sift together the icing sugar and the ground almonds. Discard the bigger almond pieces if any. Put the mixture in the food processor and run the machine few seconds to sift and mix well the powders. Sift again through a sieve on a large sheet of baking paper. Set aside.

Pour 100 g room temperature egg whites in a big mixing bowl and whisk them with an electric mixer just until they form medium air bubble. You don’t want them in a meringue texture but just bubbly. Keep your electric whisk ready near the mixing bowl.

In a little thick bottomed saucepan, bring the sugar and water to a boil on medium heat. Cook until the candy thermometer registers 250º F (121º C), which is the temperature at which the syrup will form threads when pulled with a fork.

As soon as the syrup has reached the right temperature, begin to whisk again the egg whites at very high speed while pouring the syrup slowly in a thin stream. When all the syrup has been poured, continue to whisk the meringue until it is cool to the touch. This will take about 10 minutes of high speed electric whisking. If you have a stand-up mixer, use it instead of the electric whisk. It will free your hands while doing the job.

Add the vanilla and almond extracts and whisk to combine to the macarons batter.

Lift the baking sheet with almond meal/icing sugar mixture on it and pour the powders on the meringue. Using a rubber spatula, incorporate the powders to the meringue by lifting the mixture from under, bringing it up and then back under again. It’s difficult to explain but if you look at the 2 pictures of the macaron batter below you will have a good idea of what I mean.

Add the slightly beaten egg whites and incorporate in the same fashion. These will adjust the batter consistency. The second picture below shows what texture the batter will be after the addition of the 80 g egg whites.

Put the batter in a pastry bag fitted with a plain large tip. If you use guides drawn on a baking sheet, put a plain sheet on top of the one which has the circles on it. You will see the circles underneath the clean baking sheet. Pipe the batter on the sheets.

Preheat the oven to 300º F (150º C). Put a sheet at a time in the pre-heated oven and lower the heat to 250º F (120ºC). Keep the door very slightly open using a wooden spatula to stop the door from closing. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Remove the baking sheet from the oven and immediately lift the baking paper to pour a little bit of water underneath it (not too much, you don’t want to wet the bottom of your macarons.) This will help remove the cookies. Allow to cool before attempting to remove the macarons from the baking paper.

Before putting the following macaron sheet to bake, bring back the oven temperature to 300ºF (150ºC). Lower to 250º F (120ºC) again after the baking sheet is in and don’t forget to leave the oven door very slightly open using a wooden spatula if necessary to prevent it from closing.

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