A few weeks ago, a friend of mine (a former classmate from culinary school) whom I haven't seen or talked to in a while, contacted me--she needed help with the macarons.
She is now a chef instructor at a local grocery megastore, and had wanted to have a macaron making class...except apparently, she has NEVER been able to successfully make macarons in the past. After many failed attempts, she had quit making them six months ago, out of sheer frustration. But she finally decided to give the macarons a try--and enlisted my help to do it.
We set up a macaron-baking date at her workplace. When I got there, I was mesmerized by all the shiny, fancy equipment she had.
This is what the classroom looked like. The glass door on the far end is the entrance/exit.
A huge, industrial fridge on the left side...
The back end, where the chef instructor stands. The shelves contain spices, herbs, about four Cuisinart stand mixers.
What's really cool about these cabinets is that the doors open upward instead of sideways. Unlike those with doors that swing out sideways, these hatchback cabinets will definitely prevent someone from banging their heads on the doors--as I myself have done before, and ended up with a nasty bump on my skull.
Anyway, back to the real issue at hand--the macarons. We used the recipe from our textbook, which involves making a French meringue--the easiest, the least intensive method. Since she wants to teach this class to people with (probably) no culinary background, we decided to opt for this recipe.
I asked her what was exactly wrong with her macarons. She said that they "just didn't look right".
...All righty then. Guess we'll follow the recipe step-by-step and see how they turn out.
After I piped them out, I told her that we now have to let them rest for at least 20 minutes, to which she asked why. When I explained to her that it's the resting that gives macs their characteristic smooth shell/domes, she...looked a bit aghast. Turned out she never did that, which totally explained why her macs never turned out right!
After the resting period, we popped them into the ovens. By habit, I am wary of ovens I've never used before, since every oven is different. We ended up with two sheet pans, so as an experiment, we put one in a non-convection oven and the other in a convection oven.
Halfway through the baking time, we took a peek...
It's working! We both (almost) squealed in delight. We compared the results between the convection vs. non-convection oven. The convection oven had better results; the non-convection oven caused the bottom to cook faster, and the macs ended up with dark foot.
The feet got a little big, but the texture was spot on. The meringue would've been a bit more stable if we had used fresh egg whites instead of from the carton, but it's OK.
We whipped up a small batch of vanilla buttercream and filled them.
My friend was very happy that her macs finally turned out good! Her daughter loves them, so she was more than happy to take home the vast majority of them--I took only one, to give to my mom. It is kind of unfortunate that my family is not a huge fan of macarons... :P
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