Photo: Thinkstock

As French macarons continue to invade our shores, vying for the spot of sweetest little treat and giving the cupcake craze a run for its money, it can be easy for fans of the delicate almond-flour cookies to overlook one thing: Cupcakes are damn easy to make. Most of us grew up dumping flour, sugar, and eggs in a bowl for school birthdays and Girl Scout bake sales. There's an art to the cupcake, of course, but it's unfussy, and even a lumpy or chewy batch can be slathered over with enough icing and eaten. The macaron, though, can be intimidating. Crispy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside, the brightly colored cookies burn easily and seem to crack without reason. When I made my first batch at home, piping almond batter onto a cookie sheet, I was left with more corkscrews than ovals on the tray and in my zeal to sandwich two of them together around a sweet jelly, I overfilled them and helped more than one friend stain her shirt.

So when I met Daniel Hebet at a macaron-making demonstration in southern France, I had a few questions. (To start, why do my macaroons come out like broken jelly bombs while yours are perfectly airy, brightly hued confections?) Hebet cut his teeth at Ladurée, the famous macaron shop that opened its Parisian doors in 1862, and he's now the owner of the Michelin-starred Les Jardins du Quai in Provence. (It's from there that he leads cooking demonstrations for Trafalgar Tours.) As we whipped up a batch of perfectly shaped, perfectly baked macarons, Hebet shared these secrets, which will work with any macaron recipe you favor.

Photo: Kate Rockwood

Think powder, not liquid: The cookie part of a macaron sandwich is the same recipe whether you're making pistachio or caramel; it's the filling that lends it the flavor. Most chefs use ample food coloring to brighten the discs into vivid colors: bright green for pistachio, deep purple for blackberry. But my generous squirt of liquid food dye was adding too much moisture to the recipe, Hebet cautioned, which was making my batter gloopy and my cookies flat. "Powdered food coloring is better," he says, "or powdered cocoa, if you want the rich brown of chocolate."

Easy does it: To make macarons, you beat egg whites and sugar syrup and then fold that mixture into ground almond meal. Here's where the cookie's texture is determined, Hebet says, and the gentler you are with the batter, the easier it will be to form perfect little circles. He skips a spoon entirely in favor of a wide spatula, which he uses to lift and fold the batter, just until it's evenly mixed.

Hold 'er steady: These cookies won't spread, and because you'll probably be making a lot of them (each sandwich is two cookies, after all), you can fill the parchment-lined baking sheet from edge to edge. To keeping that macaron-laden parchment paper from sliding around on its journey in and out of the oven, though, Hebet first dabs a little bit of raw batter under each corner, then presses the parchment in place. The bright pink batter acts as a glue, yet doesn't burn.

Low and slow: Once you've filled your plastic bag or pastry bag with the batter and you're ready to start piping the cookies onto the parchment sheet, hold the tip down close to the baking sheet and hold steady. My corkscrew shapes, Hebet explains, came from holding the bag too high and moving it before I'd finished piping the cookie. "And practice, practice, practice," he advises.

Not all creams are created equal: French macarons can be filled with everything from whipped cream to caramel to coconut cream to jam. "But the sweeter the filling is, the less of it you should use," he suggests. Anything but a thin layer of preserves or jam will be too cloying (see: my old jelly bombs), while lightly sweetened whipped cream can be piled high and studded with fresh fruit. A recent twist we classmates enjoyed: a mountain of whipped cream mixed with sweet mascarpone cheese, finished with raspberries.

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