What in the world happened! I can't make macarons all of a sudden? I mean look at this mess :'(
Macarons can be
such heartbreaker. It's either good or ugly...no in-between. But don't dispair.
It can be fixed :).
Macarons are so
finicky because what has to be right is hard to control. It doesn't realy on
chemical reaction, unlike pound cake for example. If the ingredients are right
amount, they're more-or-less forgiving to the surroundings. Macarons, on the
other hand, are purely physics. Pressure and temperature are what make or break
them.
Pressure is
generated by moisture in the batter. It becomes steam during baking. But
moisture here is part of egg white. It's not what I measure and add, grrr. And
temperature? It's not just the knob on the oven. It's also heat distribution
within the oven >.<. Eeee! Sometimes macaron god is kind and like the oven
in my previous place, it worked right off the bat. But other times, we just
have to find the sweet spot ;).
For my case, the
biggest change between good and ugly was the heat source; from gas to electric.
Though my oven thermometer registered the same temperature (ya, seriously),
bottom of the uglies did look slightly brown. Is bottom being heated more than
top?
I baked the next
batch on the higher rack. Not good enough but no eruption - going in the right
direction :D.
Looks like I have
to protect the bottom even more. Another common trick is to double up the pan
to give a heat cushion. Finally! Just to make sure this is the optimum
condition, I tried the top rack, double pan in the middle rack, yadi yadi yada.
It turns out, this oven has an extremely small success window for macarons. Should the second pan stay hot in oven...explosion again!
This is the
cookie test I did when I moved. Looks pretty uniform right? I went much deeper into the oven profiling this
time. We're going to get along so well now :D
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