Strawberry Macarons

Course Dessert

Cuisine French

Combine the Italian Meringue Buttercream with the smaller amount of strawberry jam.

Place the larger amount of strawberry jam into a piping bag fitted with a coupler and a #12 piping tip.
Place the strawberry buttercream in a piping bag fitted with a coupler and a #12 piping tip.
Flip half of the macaron shells upside down and pipe a ring of buttercream around the outside of the macaron (i.e., on the flat part of the cookie). Fill the center of the buttercream ring with strawberry jam. On some of my larger cookies, I did a double bullseye so there would be a little more strawberry jam.
Place the other half of the cookie on the filling and gently press to push the filling to the edge of the cookie.

Macarons are good the day they are made, but they are best after sitting in the freezer for 24 hours. Wrap the cookies in plastic wrap and freeze. To eat, bring the cookie to room temperature with the plastic wrap still on. This will keep the condensation from making the cookie soft.

You might want to add a few more drops of food coloring for a deeper red color. The color always fades a little when the meringue is folded into the flour mixture. To get vibrant colored cookies, it is best to add powdered food coloring, which doesn’t change the moisture content of the cookies. Some people are sensitive to the flavor of red dyes. You can use a "no taste" food coloring if you would prefer.
The strawberry flavor is coming solely from the strawberry jam. Make sure you use a high-quality jam. Also, be very careful if you add more than 75g of jam. If there is a high ratio of liquid to buttercream, it can cause the buttercream to curdle.
If you don’t have piping tips, you can just cut the tip off of the piping bag before piping.