Beautiful Peppermint Macarons filled with chocolate ganache and adorned with crushed candy canes. These gluten free and dairy free cookies are everything.

French macarons – they’re one gorgeous cookie that leaves everyone fan-girling in their wake. Their bright colors and fun flavor combinations make them look like pretty little gems in a bakery display case. They’re one of my favorite specialty cookies and I even have an entire Pinterest board dedicated to them.
While this is the first macaron recipe I’ve shared on the blog, it isn’t my first time making them. I’ve actually been practicing making macarons for over a year now. It’s not that macarons are hard to make, it’s that they can be a bit finicky. With only a few ingredients in macarons, almond meal, confectioners sugar, granulated sugar, egg whites, cream of tartar, and salt – they need to come together perfectly in order to get it right.
One of the main components to macarons is egg whites. If you’ve ever made meringue, you know you have to make sure everything is “just so” before attempting to beat your egg whites if you want it to be successful. I’m talking low humidity, room temperature eggs, super clean and super dry bowl, not a speck of egg yolk, and not a single speck of any kind of fat (like residual oil in the bowl).
I also age my egg whites to help the cause, which is a super simple step. Just separate your egg whites fr...