Macawrong to Macaron: Part 1

The very first time I tasted French macarons I was unimpressed. It was chewy sticky and overly sweet. I did not understand why people flock to buy them from Lindt Café in Sydney. How on earth is a gooey mess of wet sugar appealing? But I pretended to vaguely like it for it was a gift from a housemate who flew them all the way back to Melbourne.

The second time I tried macarons, it was in Bakerzin in Singapore. I fell in love with it. It was unlike anything I have ever eaten. Light and airy, with a tinge of intense sweetness that fades as quickly as it appeared. I could have eaten 10 if they were more affordable.

This is not to say that macarons in Singapore is way better than those from Lindt Café-Sydney. My virginal experience with French macarons was ruined the moment those delicate wafers went on board the airplane. The change in air pressure was enough to introduce moisture into those fragile pastries, deflating the airiness.

And this is the story of how my obsession was borne.

I have made so many batches of ‘failed’ macarons, or maca-wrongs as they are commonly called, that it is becoming embarrassing. Google tells me that I am not alone in this failure. Nearly half of the internet feels my pain. Hmph, I am determined to get this right.

I refused to be beaten by a little small round French pastry. I am no expert baker, although I don’t consider myself a novice. Whichever way, I know that I am a trained lab researcher so this is how I am going to approach this.

I have a plan to attempt macarons at least once a week till I get it right. With each batch, a variable will be introduced and the nature of the variable would be dependable on the outcome of the previous session.

From previous macarons attempts, I constantly got flat, cratered, sticky macarons without the coveted ruffled foot. Ahh, the notorious foot.

Several factors can influence the foot-formation. Half of the articles on the internet will tell you to let your macarons rest after piping them on the tray. This is so that a ‘skin’ may form and when baked, the ‘skin’ will rise exposing the coveted ruffled feet.

However not everyone feels that way. Rob who works at Fauchon thinks that overfolding contributes to the lack of feet. Which sort of makes sense as well. Deflating the egg whites in the folding stage may cause a collapse in the macaron structure, leading to no rising and no feet. Interestingly, Rob does not believe in resting the piped batter and he gets great ruffled feet from baking them immediately. Tests of resting batter by David Lebovitz showed that resting does indeed leads to prettier feet.

I used to get no feet even with a long period of resting and I am slightly doubtful of rest being key to macaron feet. But the idea of the ‘skin’ forming and rising makes perfect sense to my logical mind so that would be my first variable in the series of macaron baking attempts.

I wonder how things will go from there.