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We love making french macarons to share with you! Our latest flavor, Cotton Candy Macarons, are so pretty and just as delicious as they look! Blue and pink swirled together for the cookie portion and filled with an amazing cotton candy buttercream frosting.

Macarons can be finicky if you are not careful. However, Kayla and I have finally perfected our technique and we are sharing it with you in this post.

If cotton candy is not your jam, be sure and check out our Cinnamon Roll Macaron recipe. But for now, let's talk about these beautiful cotton candy macarons.

How to Make Cotton Candy Macarons

Macarons are a finicky cookie if you don't know what you are doing. For starters, I will tell you that before we were successful with this recipe, we FLOPPED 9 times. Yes — you read that right — 9 unsuccessful cookie tries. 

But now, we have it down pat and our cookies have turned out great since then.

The number one thing that I can tell you is to get an oven thermometer for the inside of your oven. Most macarons should be cooked at 300 degrees.

So — here is what you need to get started for making these cotton candy flavored macarons.

Start by gathering all your ingredients —

• powdered sugar
• almond flour
• cotton candy flavoring
• egg whites
• egg white powder
• sugar
• pink and blue food coloring
• buttercream frosting
• silicone piping bags with round tip

Start by combining 1 and 1/2 cups of powdered sugar with 1 cup of almond flour. You will also want to add in 1 tablespoon of egg white powder. This will help your cookies to fill out more and not be hollow.

Now, using a sifter, sift the almond flour mixture. The reason you do this is so that you get rid of all the clumps that are in the almond flour. You want a very superfine powder to work with. This will ensure your cookies come out smooth on top.

The best almond flour to use is the Blue Diamond Finely Sifted Almond Flour.

Just throw away the clumpy bits because you will not use them. Set the other bowl aside.

Now, in your stand mixer, you will beat your egg whites until they are fluffy. Then, add in your sugar and beat on high until somewhat stiff. Your egg whites need to be stiff enough to create a little bird beak. When you dip your whisk into the egg whites and pull it out, the tip of the whites should stand up easily.

Fold the meringue into the dry ingredients. The batter will be thick but loose enough to make a figure 8 in the batter.

To whip this batter, you have to be super careful and not over whip it. This will cause your cookies not to gain their feet (which we will talk about below).

In the bowl, use a rubber spatula and start a circle in a clockwise motion. When you get back to the top at 12'oclock, then go straight down. That is 1 turn.

Do this 30-45 times.

Now, separate the batter and add one drop of baby blue food coloring to one part and one drop of light pink to the other batter. Gently mix until combined. You do not want to overmix the batters.

Now, put your round tip on the piping bag and fill the bag with the cookie batter. To get the swirled look, we added both at the same time from each side to ensure we got a swirl.

Pipe the cookies onto the tray. You can make smaller ones or you can make bigger ones. The size depends on you. The normal size is about 1 and 1/2″.

We like to stay somewhere in between.

Once you pipe the cookies onto your parchment lined sheet tray, take a wet finger and gently tap the top of the cookies if there are any tips sticking up.

Take the tray and firmly tap it on the counter 3 times to remove any air bubbles from the cookies.

Then, let the cookies rest for 15-20 minutes or until the tops are dry to the touch. They should not be sticky at all.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees and when you are ready to bake the cookies, place them on the middle rack and bake for about 12 minutes.

Let them cool before peeling them off of the parchment paper. Your cookies should have feet like these when they are baked correctly.

Let's Fill Those Cookies

Before filling your cookies, take them and try to match up the sizes as best as you can. Since we are human and not perfect, the sizes will not all be uniform.

You can fill your cookies with whatever flavor of buttercream you like, but for this cookie, we flavored the buttercream with a teaspoon of cotton candy flavoring.

My easy buttercream frosting is what I use for all of my macaron recipes. I just usually half the amount for macarons.

For decorations, we dusted the tops of the cookies with this pearl luster dust and then drizzled on some melted white chocolate chips.

We finished the cookies with these fun cotton candy inspired sprinkles.

You can eat them right away or store them in the fridge for a couple of hours. I like to let mine stay in the fridge because they just taste SO MUCH BETTER!

Be sure to try my other delicious macaron flavors —

• Hot Chocolate Macarons
• Coffee Flavored Macarons
• Strawberry Lemon Macarons
• Lemon Lavender Macarons
• Cinnamon Roll Macarons

Make Macarons Like a Pro with These Supplies

If you like making macarons or want to try your hand at it, here are some supplies you might want to invest in.

• Macaron Baking Kit
• Gel Food Coloring
• Cookbook on making macarons for beginners
• Macaron baking boxes
• Flour Sifter