Monday, June 27, 2011

Baking Macs @ Indonesia

Phewww, finally I get the chance to update my blog today.. I started taking macaron orders last week and yesterday was my biggest order so far, 150 pieces of those little dainty almond sandwiches. Baking all those macs was definitely tiring, but I enjoyed it because my macs turned out looking better than I expected :D Was it that easy? Did it turn out great the first time I baked them in Indonesia? Noooppeeeee... At first, I used Pierre Herme's recipe with the Italian meringue and the first few batches turned out great. Well, a little bit too sweet but that's due to the higher sweetness of Indonesian sugar compared to US sugar. Oh, and the filling melted so fast that I didn't even have time to pipe them onto the shells before they dripped from the piping bag to all over my counter -___-" Absolutely hate the effect of humidity and heat in Indonesia on macarons :( The 2 batches I made were for this month's Mac Attack: Fruit, thus the inclusion of griottine and berries into the fillings. I liked the pistachio griottine much better than the white chocolate berry because the second one was too sweet for my taste *white chocolate was never my favorite*


 Milk chocolate pistachio griottine macaron

White chocolate berry macarons

As you can see, my macs still looked good despite all the mishaps. And then, everything went wrong. I used the same exact recipe, ingredients, technique, oven, mixer, everything, but I kept failing. My macs didn't rise, instead they became just like regular meringue cookies. When they did form a skin and feet, the tops broke into little volcanoes. I made 5 batches and only got 8 decent looking macs :( Until now, I still don't know what was wrong. After I failed again and again, I was ready to give up and I only had 3 days to make 150 macs. If I were in the US with all my baking tools, it wouldn't have been a problem. However, my baking stuffs are still being shipped and I had to deal with the new ingredients. So, I decided to go with the simpler French meringue method. I was very skeptical because I tried it once and it didn't work. Surprisingly, I got really nice shiny macarons with feet! I was ecstatic! Then everything went smoothly, I finished baking all 150 macs in a day :D I think I'm done baking macs for a while, unless someone orders them. Okay, below is the pic for the French meringue macs, til later!!
Dark chocolate, matcha, vanilla bean, pistachio, rose macarons

8 comments:

  1. I think they came out great. Beautiful colors and flavors.

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  2. Wow! Good for you on taking on the humidity: it certainly doesn't sound easy and don't envy you with all these orders - like no pressure, or anything ;-)
    Bravo with the result! They look fabulous.

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  3. Just amazing...wow! Those are beautiful and also such fantastic flavour combinations. PRETTY! Thanks for joining us at MacTweets.

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  4. Your macarons are so pretty <3

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  5. We all have food flops so we understand your frustrations. But wow, you still managed to bake a lot of beautiful macs. I like the vibrant color of the green macs and the brush design on the pink ones.

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  6. Gorgeous with lovely cross sections! I find that I get the volcano effect if the oven is too hot. I had to turn my oven down about 30 degrees from the lowest temp in a recipe before I got rid of the volcanoes! I think it was also my pans, I got thicker pans and have adjusted the temp up 20 degrees

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  7. Congratulations on a big macaron order! Gorgeous macarons as usual!

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  8. gu thẩm mỹ hiện đại là trường phái ưa thích, bao gồm do go noi that , do go noi that phong khach , do go noi that nha bep , do go noi that phong ngu ... để nhận ra style này, màu xám hay màu gỗ nguyên từ cây là sáng tạo làm đẹp được áp dụng. các thành phần nội thất ưa thích trong các gian phòng này là mau ghe sofa phong khach , tu phong ngu , giuong ngu , một số màu sơn như màu xám, nâu, đen hoặc màu sắc có liên quan đến màu tối để những người có thể tạo điểm đặc biệt hoành tráng. phát minh làm đẹp bằng gỗ xuất hiện trong noi that van phong vì họ thấy rằng nó sẽ khiến nhà hàng trông sạch sẽ và tươi sáng, tạo nên nét duyên dáng đặc biệt trong diện tích học tập riêng của từng người. sat my thuat , gia cong sat , gia cong inox

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