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 -
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 -
- Experience #1 - A good, reliable recipe (most of which is standing on the shoulders of others)
- Experience #2 - learning what "right" looks like during the macaronage
- 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!
You are spoiling me, John!!!
ReplyDeleteWhenever I come in dreading the pile of work that screams at me saying "finish me, pick me, no me first"... your macaron puts a smile on my face and I am all set to tackle the day... and thoughts of quitting and running away from all problems vanish magically :-)
Thank you for that!
Sincerely!
Anu.
:) glad to make you smile, Anu. I think I tried to respond before from my Android, and obviously, I'm not very good that yet!
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