Random 16 - 1 Step Forward, 2 Steps Back

Had some ripe bananas last weekend, but didn't feel like making macarons, but decided to get off my butt and at least make Jialin Tian's Banana Rum Caramel Ganache.  Boy - that's a tasty combo - different flavors at different times (rum up-front, than banana & caramel sweetness, than the chocolate richness comes thru).

So - this weekend, I decided to make the shells. Using the extra jelly-roll pans & silpats I had, so it'd go faster. What a disaster - first batch I cooked too hot and too long - by the half-way point, the lower tray were small volcanoes, and the upper tray fared better, but ~40% of them had expanded horizontally and merged.

2nd batch I moved up the oven racks a notch, lower the temp some, and lowered the time. But - oven was still to warm, and I think there wasn't enough airflow, so lower tray was still volcanoes, and I ended up under-cooking them a bit, trying not to toast the 2nd half of the batch.

Ended up w/ only ~30 "respectable" looking macarons, so I filled them and and a few macawrongs for home consumption, and brought 2 dozen into work today.

Because the filling is so "wow", I think they'll still be enjoyed, but I definitely need to get back to good / reliable shells.  Funny - I think part of the problem was that I was using the "fool-proof" recipe from Macaron Magic, but forgot that I had lowered the heat / increased the baking time, but this time I forgot to lower the heat... Which just goes to show you, at least from my opinion, making macarons fool-proof is 3 things -

1. Experience #1 - A good, reliable recipe (most of which is standing on the shoulders of others)
2. Experience #2 - learning what "right" looks like during the macaronage 
3. Experience #3 - your kitchen - in this case, my oven. 

But, all in all, not-great shells with a really great filling are still pretty awesome!

Batches 13, 14 and 15

After a year and a half of being busy, I finally had some time & energy to try again.  Friend of mine started up making Macarons using "Macaron Magic" by Jialin Tang - he said it was somewhat like the Cooks Illustrated version of making macarons - author was a PhD scientist who tried to take the guess-work out, so I got the book and tried some recipes.

My thoughts:

• Macaron Magic book is quiet detailed, lots of pictures, and tries to tell you what you're going for at every stage, so better than many.
• Her "enhanced recipe" is pretty much the classic 1/1.3 ratio (1100g egg whites : 300g sugar + 75g water for meringue; 110g egg whites : 300g almond meal + 300g powdered sugar for wet dough base), except with some additional powdered egg-whites to help control moisture content.
• It's not fool-proof - 1st batch as so-so, 2nd batch was great, 3rd batch was so-so again. It still comes down to "macaronage" (or what she calls a"quasi-meringue")

So - OK book, better for people starting off than those doing OK / pretty well so far. I still think the biggest problem is getting folks to understand the "molten lava" stage, and being ultra-consistent on a recipe (see below - I had a great batch with #14, and then left out something and added more liquid, and #15 shells weren't nearly as good)

• Random #13 - I did 3 fillings to see what worked - Dried Apricot Jam w/ Southern Comfort (way too sweet), Fresh Berry Jam (very tasty, bit too sweet), and Caramel. 
• Random #14 - wanted to offset sweetness somewhat, so added 1/2 teaspoon salt to the meringue (in addition to the 1/2 teaspoon dried egg whites and 1/2 teaspoon Cream of Tartar) and Vanilla seeds from 2 Vanilla pods. I also put in 1 teaspoon of Beanilla Amaretto flavor to the wet dough base, to pop the almond flavor some, and then did Calamansi Jam (from Honomu Jams, Big Island, Hawaii) with a Orange Blossom Swiss Butter Cream.  Great combo - little sweet still, but best macarons overall so far - consistent shells, nice flavor profile - lots of almond flavor, nice burst of citrus w/ the Calamansi, and then smooth buttercream with subtle floral highlights.
• Random #15 - Decided I bought cream to make Ganache, so despite having some left-over Caramel Cream to use, I was going to make Ganache after all. The final macaronage was a bit wet, so the shells expanded horizontally, and ~60% of them were too merged to salvage into decent looking Macarons (and were promptly eaten as rejects, or made into funny looking macanots). Also have air-pocket underneath top shell, so I believe the extra wetness from adding 1 tablespoon vanilla extract + 1 teaspoon amaretto flavor. And their a little sweet - I forgot to add the salt this time...

I think I can reproduce the shells from Random #14. I'm also changing my print-out grid of 1.25" circles - instead of trying to do 10x6 in staggered rows, and running into merging problems if their a little wet, I'm going to do 9x5 - 3 trays @ 10x6 gave me 180 shells, now it'll be 4 trays @ 9x5 for 180 shells. I've got 4 jelly-roll pans, but I think I'll buy 2 more, so I can do 2 trays at same time in oven w/ a extra pan below to keep the bottoms from cooking faster than the tops. 

Random 12 - Caramel Butter Cream

Took a week off from making macarons - didn't buy any eggs & seperate them early enough in the week.  But did seperate some last week, so today was Macaron day again!

This weeks recipe is Pierre Hermes for Caramel Macarons - of course, I didn't have the liquid coffee extract he suggested, so I used a 1 teaspoon of instant coffee in 15g of hot water.  I'm assuming the very weak coffee flavor is because the coffee extract is much stronger, so instead of a coffee flavored shell, these are more Cafe au Lait (which sounds fancier, but some coffee with a lot of milk, so not very strong, just like the coffee flavor I got).

So - how did the 3rd batch go?  Should be best ones yet, right?  Ummm - no.

1) Batter - what I thought was nice & light turned out to be too wet.  When I piped them out, making them a little bit bigger this time, they then settled more, and about 1/3rd of them clumped together so much as to be unuseable (besides not getting nice, individual shells, they cook different in clumps, and got huge air pockets and undercooked in the center ones).

2) Caramel - it's tasty, and sweet. But boy - when they say butter cream, I know why butter is the first word.  I don't think most people will notice, if they only eat one. It's light and fluffy enough, but wow that's a lot of butter.  And the caramel managed to boil over - I grabbed it off the burner at the last possible chance to avert a huge mess, resulting in a smaller mess on the stove top, and a small burn on 1 finger.

3) On the good side, I had done some research and found out it takes a while for the sugar syrup to reach 115c, so relax and wait for it.  Needed to do same thing later on with the caramel, after adding in the butter (which took forever to incorporate with a wooden spoon - next time I'm breaking out the whisk earlier), and then the heavy cream - even that took a while to boil up to 108c.

So - it's a good batch - maybe a 6 or 7.  Shells are too light in general with big air pockets, and filling is very sweet and buttery.  Don't think I'll make this one often. Next batch, I think, will be left-overs.  Probably 2/3rds Blackberry Confiture (from #11, frozen for a rainy day), and maybe 1/3 Caramel (if there's not enough Blackberry).  Maybe not a bad idea as it'll give me time to focus on the shells with the filling(s) already done.

Random 11 - Blackberry

Was motivated last week to make lighter, airier shells, so today was round 2 inspired by Pierre Herme's book Macaron.

2 quick learnings:

1. Making more meringue does *not* make for a lighter macaron.  Using 50% more egg whites for the meringue ends up with batter that is no-where near the lava / magma consistency needed.  Good news is that it dawned on my quickly what I'd done, so I just took out 50% more almond meal and powdered sugar, and sifted it into the bowl.
2. Pierre* - I owe you an apology.  The problems I had in last batch were 10x more my fault (not making a proper meringue, AND not following your recipe exactly - adding 20% more dry ingredients (cocoa powder instead of chocolate liquor) than anything else. As I said - I was probably being unfair and judging my results from trying to following your recipe than the recipe itself.

Which, as everyone who has tried to follow a recipe for something non-trivial like a macaron, even a good recipe doesn't replace experience and knowing.

This week I tried to make Pierre's recipe for Raspberry Macarons.  As I admitted in (1) above, I had initially tried making a lighter shell by just making more meringue, although ultimately this just resulted in me having 50% more shells.  But - as the meringue was done right - a few minutes at low speed (3/9 on my mixer) to lightly froth the whites, a few minutes at medium speed (6/9) to double in size, and then full speed (9/9) as I drizzled in the hot sugar syrup.  I used my new Thermapen to read the temperature this time - which was good, as my old thermometer turned out to be about 10C off.

Piped the shells - I think the hazelnut meal makes the batter a bit thicker / rougher, so they weren't as smooth as last time, and I still get the little tips, but I choose to just use place an almond slice / sliver on top of each shell and push them back down.

Filling - well, the store had frozen raspberries with sugar - how much, no one noes, or frozen blackberries, cherries, strawberries and blueberries.  Not a huge fan of strawberries (unless you get really ripe & sweet ones) or blueberries. Had a strong leaning towards cherries, as I love them, I know they go well with cardamom macarons, and I had some Bitter Chocolate Ganache left over from last week, and wouldn't that be great. So I resisted that urge and got blackberries, to try to be as close to Pierre's recipe as I could.  Mashed them up, added some sugar (not quiet as much listed) and pectin.  Tasty jam.

Piped the Ganache  - instead of just having enough for a dozen or two, it ended up being enough for the whole batch (~120 cookies), since this was only supposed to be half the filling.  The jam (Confiture) also ended up being a lot more than needed - partially because of the Ganache, and also because I think the recipe made a generous amount.

Overall - great combo. I call it a "3 flavor macaron", as you really notice the fruit up front, and then the cardamom almond shells, and then finish up with the chocolate.  And the shells are crispy and air. Yum. Not sure if it's my favorite batch overall, but it's certainly a keeper.

No heresies this week - could it be that with a little more experience and practice, I've come to see the wisdom in the established faith?  Eeerrrccchhhh - I'm talking macarons here, not religion or politics. I may blaspheme about Pierre's recipe a bit less, but the Establisment is still evil.

* Notice that not only have I challenged the man's recipe, but have assumed because I own a copy of his book, we're good friends and I can call him by his first name.

Random 10 - Macaron Heresy

My wife gave me Pierre Herme's book, and this weekend I finally got off my butt and made a batch, following his recipe and techniques.

*** Warning - if you are a macaron purist, what I conclude may be considered heresy in your mind. I'm an open minded agnostic, so I'm willing to experiment and try almost anything once, so from my point-of-view, it's just a question I encountered on my Random Acts of Macarons. ***

Background - I've made 9 batches of macarons before, using the French meringue technique. 1st batch was good, next 5 batches had issues, as I was trying to save sugar on the cookie side and never ended up with a true meringue, so ended up with a number of variants on the macawrongs, macawhats, and macanots. But, being an engineer, I figured there was some science involved that was preventing me from "just using less sugar", so I went and read-up on meringues and understand it better. (Short form is meringues aren't just whipped up eggs with sugar - a true meringue needs sugar to form the right chemical bonds and be stable, or you end up with whip eggs that collapse). On the positive side, I know a lot more about what can and will go wrong with macarons, and am not afraid to experiment.

So - I followed the recipe for "Bitter Chocolate Macarons" mostly. Mostly because I didn't buy 100% chocolate pate (aka cocoa mass, or unsweetened bakers chocolate) but purchased cocoa powder. Yes, yes - they give it different names for a reason - cacao pate / unsweetened chocolate is the solid form or chocolate liquor (and vice versa), which is roughly 50% cocoa butter and 50% cocoa solids. And cocoa powder is nearly 100% cocoa solids. For the ganache, the 100% chocolate pate was only ~10% of the total chocolate, so by using cocoa powder, I made it 10% more chocolaty, and marginally less fatty (although w/ 400g of cream and another 140g of butter, less fatty is a relative term). On the cookie / shell side, 120g of cocoa powder is the *only* source of chocolate, so they were definitely more chocolaty, and probably a bit denser than they should have been.

And my food thermometer didn't work right, so I couldn't tell when the sugar syrup was at 115C exactly, to start whipping the egg whites / 118C for drizzling it into the mixer, but it was boiling, so it was hot enough, but maybe a little over.

Having said all that, they came out very good - nice peds, no air pockets in the cookies, wonderful flavor. Bit "too much" chocolate, not enough almond flavor for my palate, but I can only blame myself for that.

*** Warning - I'm getting close to the heresy section, so stop reading if you a macaron purist ***

Caveats -
1) I changed the ingredients on his recipe, so I shouldn't be commenting on his recipe but my end product. But, this is a blog - what's the point of being fair?
2) My thermometer didn't work, so I added the sugar syrup at a temperature that I guessed was about right, so again - I should only be commenting on my results. Ain't gonna happen.
3) I don't own a "fan oven", so didn't cook them @ 190C for 12m, but cooked them @ 300F for 24m, turning once in the middle (what's worked before on my French meringue batches).

*** Warning - heresy imminent ***

What the macaron shells reminded me of most, overall, is those poorly made, jumbo 3" or bigger macablimps that get sold in some stores. They're big, they're sweet, and their dense. These were not big, not overly sweet, but they were dense. Is it possible all those stores are using the Italian meringue method? Is that what makes the dense macaron shell?

For my taste, I prefer a lighter, more airy cookie.

*** Final warning - here it is ***

Is there still a better way of making the shell, so that it has the ped, no air pocket and consistent texture through-out the cookie, but is lighter than Pierre's recipe?

Guess I'm just asking the question for now, so it's not even truly heresy, just 1 guy asking if there is a better way.

To do - add link to book, add picture of the first official "Random Acts of Macarons", and do another batch, following Pierre's recipe as exactly as possible. Maybe his recipe does produce the lighter, crumbly, wow-producing experience I want, and maybe it's my interpretation that's wrong.