Erupting macarons- help!

[thecoffeesnob]

Hi guys,

I made a batch of macarons using a recipe that involves the Italian meringue method that has worked for me every time before. Well, except today.

I did everything as per the recipe. I recently got a new oven so i used the fan forced function to bake them for the first time (i used to use a conventional oven before) at 120C. I test baked 2 macarons just to see if the batter needed any more folding. They came out pretty decent.

Then disaster struck. With the subsequent trays of macarons (i let the remaining batter sit in the fridge while i baked one tray and piped another. and cooled each tray before reusing it), there were some that came out perfectly round, some that lost their round shape after piping and even some that had little 'eruptions'.

At first, i thought it might have been that i might have broken the skin of the macarons when swirling the colour in but it happened also with the plain macarons that i didn't touch after piping.

On the bright side, i did get a couple of shells that came out pretty okay and filled them with rose, chocolate and vanilla buttercream. And we had a good chuckle about how artistic some of the 'erupting' macarons looked- the one on the far bottom left looks like a sleeping puppy, don't you think?

Anyway any idea what happened with these little guys? Any help will totally be appreciated!

[tan319]

EGullet topic P Herme's "Macaron" book

Check out the 1st post here by Lamington, seems PH is using a bit of a different method now but since it sounds like you're using a convection oven now maybe it might be helpful?

Good luck, your macs look good!

[thecoffeesnob]

Thanks! And thanks for directing me to that post- i have to check that out and try that method.

Have a good weekend!

[lennyk]

maybe you should try drying them some more before going in the oven

I think the theory with macarons is that the crust should bake and get stiff fast in the oven so that it wont expand/crack and any

expansion will creep out from below which is what forms the "foot"

if the crust doesnt bake hard enough then the expansion inside will cause it to open up and erupt thru

[tan319]

The drying is a necessity for sure.

If you haven't checked this out yet. get ready for some reading!

eG macaron thread... HUGE!

There is a Nicole Kaplan ( Boss Pastry Chef) post that's real good ( staged at PH in Paris) and also a demo she did for eG , I should have mentioned before.

[alanamoana]

i also don't think there's a need to store the extra batter in the fridge, this might be a problem with temperature change from fridge to oven.

[tan319]

i also don't think there's a need to store the extra batter in the fridge, this might be a problem with temperature change from fridge to oven.

←

Wow, missed that!

That could kind of screw things up?

edited to add:

I stupidly neglected to mention Chef Kaplan has been named a Top 10 Pastry Chef by Pastry Art & Design Magazine twice in an above post.

Sorry 'bout that.

Edited October 3, 2008 by tan319 (log)