





Hi! I made two batches of macarons yesterday. I stopped macaronaging at different stages for both of them, so the bright pink ones turned out different. Here are the differences between them:
Pale pink batch (photos 1-2)
1) Macaronage was thinner
2) When torn off, the bottoms of the macarons left marks on the parchment and didn't come off completely intact – the "losses" were small, but they were still there.
3) The tops are more fragile.
4) The colour faded more, but maybe because I baked them for longer.
5) No lopsied shells.
6) I wouldn't say they're hollowed to the point when it becomes an issue, but there's a small hollow between the inside part and the crust.
7) They spread more while baking.
Bright pink batch (photos 3-6)
1) Macaronage was slightly thicker, but still easy enough to pipe.
2) The shells are rougher on the outside.
3) The colour barely changed, no yellowish hue after baking.
4) I baked two trays of them. On the first tray, some macarons came out lopsied. Maybe it has something to do with my piping technique and not macaronage itself, because the second tray was completely fine. The temperature in the oven remained the same for both trays.
5) The bottoms came off the parchment paper perfectly intact. This is the first time when they didn't left behind even a crumble.
6) The outside part of the shells isn't as fragile as it is in the pale pink shells, but it also doesn't look as neat. You can probably see the rings from piping and the small "tails" that didn't spread afterwards.
So, my question is, could it be that the pale pink batch is overmixed, and the bright pink one was slightly undermixed? Or does the latter look okay and I just need to pay attention to my piping technique next time? Also, I suspect that I might've accidentally moved the parchment paper too much when placing the tray in the oven, so maybe that's why some shells came out lopsied.
I use the same recipe for both of them. I bake them at 140°C on a silicone mat and parchment paper on a middle rack. I use albumin and dilute it with water at 1:5 ratio, letting it hydrate for at least 40 minutes. I use swiss meringue. I let the shells dry at room temperature for ~50 minutes before baking, until they don't stick to my finger. Maybe I should use the 1:4 ratio for albumin to make more stable meringue?
by Inevitable_Trifle458

1 Comment
Ours is very rough looking too, I always thought that maybe it was the flour that we were using, so it’s really interesting to see that maybe we are under mixing!