I'd made them once back home in Singapore with my sister's recipe which called for powdered egg whites, and had succeeded on the first try so was all 'pfft all those people who keep failing making macarons must really just suck at baking lol' but okay I'm sorry. I was wrong.
THESE PRETTY COOKIES ARE AN ABSOLUTE BITCH TO MAKE
There are like 1 million ways they can go wrong so even when I failed (7 times in 2 days fml) I had no idea what I was doing wrong.
I measured every single ingredient, I had the egg whites at stiff peaks (and wtf sometimes they just refused to whip up to stiff peaks I had to chuck the mixture even before baking! wth was wrong with those eggs?!), I made sure I didn't fold it too much, it was winter and the room was dry and I did the finger check before sending every batch into the oven. I even used a freaking HAIR DRYER to dry them. And they would still. fail. crackly and pockmarked :(
imagine this coming out of the oven SEVEN FRAKING TIMES. :D My mom used to tell me that this is what my husband's skin would look like if I didn't finish the rice on my plate.
But when they decided to show me their feet I was over the moon ;o; baby finally came home.
In the end, I realised it was my sugar, I had run out of icing sugar after the first time I failed (probably because I had too much liquid lol) and used caster/demerara sugar that didn't dissolve completely. But when I fixed that I succeeded!
Lesson Learnt: Follow the instructions strictly. Not much room for creativity when it comes to these babies.
So here's my recipe. It has no almond flour, so it's cheap to make and you can keep going until you succeed lol. Recommended for people who want to practice making macarons on a budget :p Or people who are allergic to nuts. So go ahead and try this macaron recipe made without almond flour!
I got this from Japanese recipe off Cookpad,
I failed so many times I've memorised the ingredients already though hahahaha.
Now. On to the recipe. Even if you fail, don't give up and keep going!! It's wheat flour so it's cheap and you can make lovely silky yummy creme patisserie out of the egg yolks!
Ingredients
Eggwhites 40g
Caster Sugar 30g
Pinch of salt or a drop of lemon juice
Cake Flour 25g
Pure Cocoa 10g
Icing Sugar 30g
This picture lied. It was my first attempt and I used demerara (that brownish thing) sugar and hazelnut extract. Don't think that's a good idea because it's kind of moist.
Preperation
Because these little babies are soooo delicate, there are some you must do before even starting.
1. Egg whites -- okay some recipes say you need to leave them at room temperature uncovered for like 2 days. I was like o___o ewww that's just super gross. There are also people who say you should freeze your eggwhites and then thaw themm which apparently makes them more stable. But that was too troublesome so thankfully I found another way to do it on some other website
1. Microwave your eggwhites for 10s.
Okay this will bring your egg whites to room temperature so it beats better and dry it out a bit I think. Use medium or low or your egg whites may get cooked, lol. It's tempting, but don't over do it.
2. Sift all the dry ingredients. Just to make sure there are no clumps
3. Switch on the heater/air conditioning and make sure your room is dry
humidity is evil. EVIL.
Method
1. Put your egg whites into a metal or glass mixing bowl (it has to be absolutely clean and oil free) and beat it with a tiny pinch of salt or drop of lemon juice (stabilizes the egg whites).
2. When it gets nice and foamy, add one third of the caster sugar and beat it until it's all dissolved. Repeat until you've added all the caster suger. Adding it in thirds makes it easier to dissolve.
3. Beat till stiff peaks. Make sure all the sugar is dissolved. You can test this by rubbing the meringue between your fingers. If it's grainy, its not dissolved (duh). If you turn the bowl upside down your meringue will not fall.
4. Add in sifted flour and cocoa and icing sugar and give it a good mix (like 3-4 times until it's slightly incorporated) It looks terrible and awful at this point but after like a few folds it will come together.
5. MACARONAGE. This step is the bomb. You need to make sure you get enough of the air out, but not too much. Consistency in the end should be kind of shiny and like ~lava~ It should flow a bit when you tilt the bowl. When you lift some of the batter down and drop it down, you should get ribbons that disappear after 2s or so.
There are a million videos on youtube showing you how to macaronage (yes, its a real word). This was my favourite:
You need to make sure the mixture is smooth. Any undissolved sugar will give you my lovely pockmarked macaron above ;_;
6. Transfer into piping bag (or ziplock bag like me) and pipe. Pipe from like 90d above the spot and you will get a nice round circle. After you're done piping, give the tray a few taps to flatten out the surface of the macaron and get any big pockets of air out.
If you are a n00b like me, use a template to pipe. I googled some and got mine from here
7. Rest and let the babies dry. Time depends on your room. Could take from 20min to 2 hours. It is done when you can touch it and it doesn't stick to your fingers.
8. While that is resting, preheat your oven to 170deg
10. When the macarons have finally dried, put it into your oven, lower the temperature and bake at 140deg for 18min. Macarons should lift off clean. If at the 4min mark your macarons are not showing their feet, stop the oven and chuck the whole batch. Don't waste electricity.
At this point I was so annoyed at not knowing why I was failing I started to do experiments, lol.
At 4 min mark, the successful macaron would have shown its feet.
Macaron on the left was made with icing sugar. Pockmark cookie on the right was made with demerara sugar lol.
Hahaha..your post are really funny & interesting..I was facing the same prob too..but dont know what keeps failing..but definitely will try this cheaper ingredient for practicing the skill of my macaron! Thanks for you post here!
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