French pâtisserie technique: Macaronage

In this series of videos, our Chefs are sharing some of the classic French techniques we teach to more than 20,000 students on our programmes around the world each year. Second in the series, here's how to create French-style macaronage for macarons. Macaronage is the stage in preparing French macaron shells where the batter is worked until smooth, shiny and flowing.

Chef tips: Your batter should be shiny. If your batter looks dull, add a little more egg whites until your mixture has a glossy shine.

We used powdered food colouring as this makes the finished macaron more vibrant in colour. If you can't find this, you can use liquid food colouring, but be careful of adding too much liquid.

We filled our macarons with jam, but you can also fill yours with flavoured buttercream or ganache.

Using a cookie cutter or bottle lid draw circles evenly spaced out onto the baking paper using a pencil or marker pen, turn this over and use as a guide to ensure your piped macaron shells are the same size.