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You might have noticed that I've grown quite fond of making macarons. These airy sweet treats are limitless when it comes to flavor combinations. They are made with ingredients that aren't as calorie loaded as other desserts, keep for longer periods of time, and easier to store. With these advantages, I decided to take it upon myself to attempt to master the art of macarons. Macarons are not easy. They have been called the pastry that turns your hair white. They make even well-experienced bakers scream in horror. And it is rumored that even the best pastry shops throw out about 25% of their macarons. I've made about 30 batches of macarons now, and I've mostly figured them out. I still have batches that I feed to the dogs, give to the homeless, and dump into the bokashi bin. This post is a tutorial for trouble-shooting macarons. I won't be posting or talking about recipes as there are plenty of them floating around, and I follow the same base recipe regardless of flavors anyways. The posts I found to be the most helpful are from mytartelette.com (unfortunately seems to be down now). Here's a link to a pdf file that has been kind of the cliff notes version of the macaron bible. Here's some fun photos of macarons. This one is a togarashi lemon with truffle oil. Some pumpkin spice chocolate and mint chocolate. You can see that some aren't covered yet. And now they are covered. Perfect macarons. This is often how I transport them. These are Tipsy Ispahan -raspberry, rose, lychee, and St. Germain Elderflower liqueur. Those were the pretty pictures. Now let's get down to some not so pretty ones. Here's a quick reference chart for various macaron problems along with photos of some at the end. I'll keep updating this post from time to time with more information and more fails. Please keep in mind that these are methods that work for me in my kitchen with Texas humidity. They may/may not work for you or in your kitchen. Enjoy and if there's anything that you think I should add, email me at Jennie at misohungrynow dot com or @misohungry on Twitter.
Here's a batch of cracked macarons. This batch cracked because the shell wasn't strong enough (crack type 1) which is often caused by too much liquid in the batter. Notice that there is a single perfect macaron with feet in the photo among all the other cracked ones. I knew that the batter for that batch was ruined so I let someone make shapes out of the batter. Goldfish-shaped macaron, anyone? Ironically, all these macarons had feet! Another photo of some perfect looking macarons, and some not so perfect ones. This batch was pumpkin spice, with too much pumpkin (liquid) in it. Here's a photo of some trays of macarons drying before baking. The batter on these were a little too stiff and thus the peaks on the macarons. However, if I had to choose, I'd choose too still over liquifying macarons. You can also see which ones I piped last. Look at the very far back right pan. Half of the macarons have peaks and the other half don't. The ones that don't have peaks were piped last and un-stiffened from the warmth of my hands and the handling. Here's a better photo depicting the peak of the macarons when piping. They should slowly flatten out and then dry. Here's another photo of some perfect macarons, and some crack (type 2 crack) macarons. You can't really tell in this photos, but many of these had feet. A close up of the same photo. Here's another photo of the same batch pre-bake. I lived life a little too close to the edge, and I piped them too close to each other. Oopsie. This is a crack (type 2) because the macaron did not dry out enough. Typically, a macaron should dry so that the top has a skin. When the macaron bakes, the skin holds the top together as the macaron rises and develops feet. The skin on this macaron was not dry enough to keep from cracking as it rose. I call this type of crack a foot on the top. If this type of crack was on the bottom, we'd call it a foot. Here's another photo of a macaron from the same batch. You can see that this crack/foot started to develop on the bottom but wasn't quite right. The crack also traverses around the macaron and towards the top just to the right of the point. The point is there because the batter was too stiff when piping. It didn't quite flatten when drying. Here's a photo of various problems. 1. Crack (type 2, also called foot on top). 2. They are stuck together. 3. One has a pointy top. Now here's some photos of pretty macarons. See how the foot rises from the bottom? The top is smooth (sprinkled with coconut though). No cracks on the top. Here's another photo from a macaron from the same batch. Now here's a photo of a macaron from a bakery (not in Texas) that looked very peculiar. I have a strong suspicions that these feet were......FAKED! You can see that there is a round smooth bottom with defined edges on this macaron. The "feet" sticking out and only around the outsides of the macaron. They did not rise from the bottom. Also, the macaron has uneven bits from using grainy almond meal. I shift my dry ingredients after weighing. My scale weighs to 0.1 of a gram. I use a glass to hold up my piping bag so I don't overhandle the batter. I use bobby pins to keep the bottom closed. The batter will spill all over the place without it. And here's a bobby pinned filled bag. I better get to piping before the batter starts to act funny.
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