Table of content

1. What are calories?
2. How do we calculate macaron calories?
3. Are all macarons equal in calories?
4. How many calories in a macaron?

If you already know what a macaron is, the next question is obviously: How many calories are in a macaron?

I'll keep this blog post short and focus on this topic!

• What are calories?

Being a former French engineer, I can detail on calories. It is actually a unit of energy.

Such a joules, or horsepower for cars, calories are simply an extra unit to measure energy.

But it makes sense though. Each unit is adapted to its field.

For example, one horsepower is the equivalent of a horse lifting 550 pounds (250kg).

Normal humans could not lift this weight. That's why we invented calories.

One calorie is the "heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water of one degree Celsius", according to USDA.

To put it short, it is way to calculate how easy it would be to burn the food we eat every day.

• How do we calculate calories?

Now that you know what is a calorie, how do we know how many calories in a macaron?

 Most manufacturers use the "Atwater system" to determine the calories in their food.

So in your regular meal, you can simply add up all the calories of ingredients you use in it, and you'll get the total calories of this dish. Pretty easy!

Calories of each ingredient, such as sugar or peanut butter, is gathered into what is called nutrition facts.

Nutrition facts tell you the total calories per serving, but also the percentage of your recommended daily value.

• Are all macarons equal in calories?

Short answer: No!

There are two types of macarons: Buttercream filling or ganache filling.

A buttercream has butter as its main ingredient. It is cheaper to make for bakeries. Butter also alters the taste and raise calories!

A ganache filling is made with white chocolate as primary ingredient.

It doesn't alter taste, it's less fat, and ship perfectly fresh across the US. That's what we make at Pastreez!

Ganache wins in terms of calories. It is also the traditional recipe that was invented over 200 years ago.

• How many calories in a macaron?

To find out about the calories in a macaron, we will take our french macarons recipe, and divide it by the number of macarons.

Since our macaron recipe is for 60 macarons, we'll divide each ingredient by 60.

Each of these ingredients has nutrition facts on the back of their packaging. And each brand is different.

With an authentic macaron recipe, a macaron is about 80 calories.

Keep in mind that in my quest for the best macarons delivery in the United States, I found that most bakery use buttercream for their filling.

Buttercream contains butter and is more fat. At Pastreez, we make our own ganache with white chocolate. Less fat and more tasty!

Macarons with buttercream will probably double in calories, around 160g.