Place your egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add your whisk attachment. Start them on a low speed and make your way up to a medium speed. At first the egg whites will foam, and then the egg whites whip up and begin to really come together. Add your cream of tartar. Start the machine on medium. Once the egg whites begin to look frothy, change it up to high speed. Once you see stiff peaks form in the meringue, add your granulated sugar one tablespoon at a time. To see if your meringue truly does have stiff peaks, we do the meringue test. Take your bowl, flip it upside down. If the meringue stays in its place, it is ready. If you are adding orange gel food coloring you would add it now before you stop whipping the egg whites.

While your egg whites are beating, mix together your almond flour and powdered sugar. If you want to make sure they are super fine, pulse the together in your food processor and use a sieve to sift them.

Once your egg whites are ready add one third of your dry mixture to the whites. You are going to want to gently fold them in the shape of a “J”. This means to cut down the middles of the bowl with your spatula, and curve up as you would a J. Continue to do this until all of the dry mixture is incorporated. You want your mixture to be smooth and to slide off of the spatula. Once it is like that, transfer the macaron batter it to a piping bag.

In order to get perfect circles, you may want to use a baking mat with circles printed on it (these are easily found on amazon). Pipe your filling onto the baking mat or parchment paper (place these on your baking sheet before you bake them).

You are now going to bang your baking tray against the counter. 5 x per side. This will allow the meringue to flatten and get rid of any potential air bubbles. Once you have done this, you need to let the macarons rest. Letting the macarons rest is a fundamental step. By letting the macarons sit, you allow the shell to harden just slightly and this helps with the bake in the oven.

Set your oven to 310°F, when ready, place macarons in the oven on the middle rack, and bake for 11-13 minutes. You will want to see little “feet” grow on them. This is the little extra bit that bubbles up when they bake under the top part of the shell. Once you haver removed your shells from the oven, allow them to cool completely.

Once the macaron shells have cooled completely, place a bit of the orange curd on one macaron shell, and then place the top on it. Gently press together and you now have successful macarons!