a very lengthy macaron post ahead
Macaron has been all the rage in Kuala Lumpur this year. They are sold per piece at the price as low as RM2-RM2.50(Whisk, Empire Gallery Subang & Babycakes Sweet Shoppe, Jalan Tun Razak) to as high as RM5 per piece in Boudoir(pedicure/manicure place in Bangsar Village). I have never been fan of sweet stuff, especially sugary sweet dessert. But guess the macaron movement have affected me to certain extent, and this could also be my retirement plan… hahaha… imagine selling a little piece for RM2-RM5… 😀 Anyway, the technicality of making macaron is frustrating, it behaves like a cranky female which wants everything according to her mood, if not it will crack up, literaly.
Below the recount of 4 macaron baking sessions which i had, the first 3 are not successful, the 4th finally has some nice feet although it doesn’t look very neat. And that is after reading all macaron chronicles post in Kitchen Musings, she does have a lot of tips for macaron baking.
Above is egg white aged minimum 3, maximum 5 days in the fridge. Aging egg white mean cracking the egg white into a container, cover it, and let it sit in the fridge. Doing this will make some water evaporate from the egg white, making it less liquidy but with the same amount of protein structure needed for macaron
1st macaron making:
newbie taking macaron for a spin, using walnut powder… macaron are most often use ground almond, bought it in a chinese sundry shop, it is a walnut drink thingy, ingredients are walnut powder + soy powder + oat powder
ingredients: aged egg white(3 to 5 days), 2 packs of walnut powder, caster sugar and icing sugar, that’s it, the ingredients are simple, just 4 ingredients for a basic macaron shell.
2 packs of walnut powder mixed with icing sugar, shake it in a plastic bag… for this first macaron baking, i didn’t have a electronic kitchen scale, everything is measured roughly which explain why it fails terribly.
sieve it(walnut powder + icing sugar mixture)
beat egg white and icing sugar
beat till stiff peak but still glossy(that’s what they say, don’t know how to differentiate glossy and dry egg white)
mix the dry ingredients(walnut powder + icing sugar) into meringue(egg white + sugar beaten up)
all combined
piped shells
beat/rap the piped shells on the counter to remove surface air bubbles
dried macaron shells(after leaving them in an air conditioned room for at least 20 minutes, maximum an hour for a dry skin to form, this will prevent the top from cracking when baked in oven
ooh, so pretty… not, they are supposed to look smooth on top and with chiseled feet at the bottom, Failed!
2nd macaron making:
so watery, can hardly pipe them at all, it was dripping all over, i measured ingredients using electronic scale. Later found out that ground almond must be put into food processor for a blitz for it to be finer, else the whole mixture will be too runny caused by not enough dry mixture to absorb the meringue
surprisingly it has feet, but why is it spread out? so ugly… According to Kitchen musing, this could be due to oily nuts, and i remember using a sift which is too fine, and i used spoon to press the ground almond+icing sugar through the sift, that must have caused the ground almond to be greasy
looks fine from this angle, but its feet spread out and fall flat after i took it out of oven
3rd macaron making:
feet spread out as well, still didn’t know about the greasy nut factor, still pressing the ground almond from the fine sift. Nathalie from Nathalie from Nathalie Gourmet Studio did mention we have to buy sift which holes are not too small
feet still spread out
4th macaron making:
I am more prepared this time, wanted to buy the placemat with rounds from Ikea, but i think they are not carrying them anymore, so got the above small squares and large circles placemat from tesco, depending on what size of macaron you want to make. Remember to use baking paper not greaseproof paper, both you can get from tesco, Rohani Jelani told us it will stick to greaseproof paper, must use baking paper, both looks similar but their texture is slightly different
lay over a baking paper over the placemat, pipe the shells accordingly
bake in on a cookie sheet, 150C, about 12 minutes
wooo, nice feet after 3 minutes, the feet should appear in the first 3 or 4 minutes into the oven, else it probably a fail
nice feet
first batch, i slightly underbake it which makes it hard to be removed from the baking paper
second batch, much better, can remove from baking paper with ease
put into a container and into fridge, you can fill in the chocolate etc filling on the next day
go the easy way by piping in ferrero nutella 😛
done, that conclude my macaron experiments. Conclusion, it is still very sweet, i find most probably the meringue will be sweet as the recipe you find online is of roughly the same amount of sugar, the only way to make them taste less sweet is probably to make a filling which is less sweet to fool the tastebuds :p
Some tips i found from Kitchen Musings:
– egg white room temperature
– Fold in your dry ingredients in at least 4 additions. Do not dump the whole thing into the beaten foam or you might end up with a runny batter.
– If you have trouble controlling the flow of your batter and it keeps linking to two mounds together as you move about piping, chances are you’ve got an over-beaten mixture.
– greasy nuts can be the bane to your macaron aspirations. A sure sign of this is when the feet tend to spread out like a duck beak.
– passion fruit milk choc fillings is the best
