Once I got back to my home kitchen, I was determined to prove that my improved macaronage and troubleshooting from previous macaron bakes were the culprits of my issues with this pastry. So I made a batch of macarons, intending to fill them with a rhubarb and ginger white chocolate ganache.
Suffice to say, white chocolate behaves significantly differently than other types of chocolate, and my ganache was an utter failure. Basically, the lack of cacao content means that it sets softer and in general requires far less liquid to make a ganache; my resulting ganache, based on a recipe for dark chocolate, was way too liquid. But I baked up a batch of the macaron shells anyways, figuring I'd find some other type of filling for them the next day when I was less frustrated.
I don't have good photos of the process here, so you're just going to have to take my word for it that I made the Italian meringue as I have before, except this time I macaronage'd until the batter was liquid enough to drip a figure eight into the bowl of batter. Here is a photo of the piped macarons; you can see that I found a template that spaced them further apart, and the properly macaronaged batter was able to allow the peaks from piping to disappear smoothly without any additional fingertip smoothing, and without spreading too much. I banged the tray on the table once or twice, and popped a few large bubbles, but for the most part, they seemed fine.
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Smooth piped macarons that barely needed any attention after piping
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And indeed! Looks like I've learned something this last two batches after all! Here's the first tray out of the oven. You can see a few on the left side that cracked; this side was closer to the back of the oven during the second half of the baking, so even though I rotated the pan and used a convection fan, it was still hotter back there. Since a macaron cracking can be due to heat, there's not much I can really do there, except maybe try the French macaron recipe from last time, where the baking temperature was extremely low.
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A few cracks where the oven was hotter, but otherwise remarkably uniform and well-formed!
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But it also brought me joy to break one of these cracked macarons in half and see that the shell was filled all the way! The top shell was contiguous with the fluffy interior, and the macaron was tender with a slight crispness to the outside, without being crunchy like a baked meringue.
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FINALLY I've conquered the hollow macaron woes
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The other option to prevent cracks is to rest the shells so they can form a harder top before trying to bake them. This made me hopeful for the second batch, but as you can see, this didn't really improve the situation that much. Honestly, a failure rate of 1/8 is something I'm able to tolerate. More snacks for me!
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Second batch, with its additional rest, didn't really differ much, which aligns well with my understanding that resting is primarily a form of insurance by drying out the top of the shell and thus strengthening it.
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Here's another shot of the macarons all in one tray, showing the cracked ones in front, with one broken open to show the interior, and all those pretty macarons with feet in the background!
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The casualties up front, the pretties taking up the rest of the tray
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For filling, I ended up making a rhubarb compote, which was still pretty liquid. But it was late spring, so I really didn't want to give up those nice stalks of rhubarb at the grocery store! But what to pair with it? The orange marmalade macarons were so well received for their jamminess that I decided to replicate this, using a cream of some sort in a ring to corral the fruit filling.
I took inspiration from another recipe in the book, where the pink macarons are heart shaped and filled with rose buttercream. This buttercream is slightly different than that used in the cakes; it is based on a sabayon, which is egg yolks and sugar whipped together over light heat until fluffy and warm. My sabayon broke immediately after I added the butter, and it never really came back together. Adding rosewater didn't help. At this point, I was just hoping to cut my losses, so I stuck the buttercream back in the fridge for a bit, whipped it, and went ahead and piped it onto my macarons. I will return for you soon, buttercream macarons; you were far too delicious to not aim for mastery of form.
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Assembled macaron
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These rhubarb and rose macarons tasted pretty good and the buttercream set with the rhubarb compote absorbing slightly into the macaron shells and tightening up a bit. The richness of the butter and sweetness of the tender cookie were well balanced by the tartness of the rhubarb, though the rose got a little lost and required searching for. The buttercream recipe calls for rose syrup, which I did not have, so I should have added more rosewater or, if I was scared to add too much liquid, made some rose syrup. But I do feel like I cracked the code of reliable Italian meringue macarons.
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Filled with a ring of rose french buttercream and a dollop of rhubarb compote
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I don't have too many notes this time since all of my findings were covered in the last few times I've made macarons. The next two endeavors will be: macarons with something other than simply almond flour in the shells, and finally, the Big Mac (a large macaron turned into a cake, essentially).
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