How To Make Red Macarons

Have you tried to make deep red macarons to only end up with pink? We understand your pain. Deep red macarons are hard to achieve. Thankfully, we tested four popular color brands and created color formulas to help you achieve the perfect red!

When to Add Food Coloring to Macarons 

Grab by macaron shell recipe and once you have your egg whites at room temp and your ingredients measured out you are ready to go. Add your food coloring during the last minute and a half of whipping your eggs. If you add your food coloring during the macaronage stage, you run the risk of overmixing it! Head to my Instagram for tips and tricks! Now that we know when to add food coloring, let’s talk about which one to add!

Which is the Best Red Food Coloring?

Baker’s Note: we had planned to do four different colors, but ran out of one, so today…only three are here to compare. We tested three popular brands: Americolor, Chefmaster, and Wilton Color Right! Now let’s see how each of these performed.

Americolor Red Red

First up was Americolor.  Americolor is a very well-known brand and ranks close to the top in color matching. Some reasons why this brand is so popular are the variety of colors, easy-to-peel opening for the tops, low aftertaste, and pure beautiful color that won’t fade when baking.

We grabbed a super-sized bottle of Red Red and off we went.  We started with 20 drops, then 40, and found our way to 60 drops! We knew even if it wasn’t the deepest red, that it would darken a few shades while waiting to bake.

The macarons turned out gorgeous, as we knew they would. Beautiful feet, sturdy tops, full shells. So let’s get on to the next color.

Chefmaster Red

Next up, Chefmaster! Chefmaster is another color line that dotes on the fact that they have zero fade in their colors (full disclosure: Barb is a color ambassador for Chefmaster). We used the color Red.

You might be surprised to learn that today, in the deep red category, they did not win top champ. Though we love their color, the easy-to-use bottles, no aftertaste, and also their shades (much like Americolor) today the red, though, took way more drops than we initially thought. We started with 20 drops, then 40, 60, 80! and then 12 more to make it 92 drops.

We knew the maturing process would happen but wanted to make sure the color was brought all the way out of the pink world before maturation. Now we will say the feet on the macarons were best.

Wilton Color Right Red

Next up, Wilton Color Right! Wilton Color Right was the first color line we ever experimented with, like very first-ever! It was the only thing that was available when we started making macarons, so we always fall back on these primary, secondary and tertiary colors.

They don’t offer a lot of variety when it comes to colors, but their tried-and-true basics pack a punch. Today we used their red.  When we first started using these colors, we would add 20 drops and then walk away disappointed that we never could achieve the perfect red. But now we know that, by adding more drops, it will bring success. 

So today we started with the usual 20 but then kept going: 30, 40, 50.  We added five more: 55 was the total. So Wilton Color Right required the fewest product to achieve the reddest results.

Sugar Art Red Rose

We also tried Red Rose in the The Sugar Art line, but we didn’t have enough left in the pot for their suggested amount of drops relative to the amount of macronage we had, but we were impressed that the light pink that we ended with did mature into a really dark beautiful pink.  That being said we promise at another time to give this color another go!

The Best Red Food Coloring

Macs from top to bottom:

Red Red from Americolor (60 drops)
Red from Chefmaster (92 drops)
Red Rose from Sugar Art (ran out!)
Red from Wilton Color Right (55 drops)

As you can see from the photo, Wilton Color Right Red yielded the strongest red color with the fewest drops! So head on over to your local store or order it online and get baking!

Want to try? Give it a go, and tell us what you think.