Quelle horreur! Yes, it’s a macarons graveyard of sorts.
As you may recall this year I became pretty engrossed with making French macarons – mostly with success. I felt like I was blessed with some sort of macaron-making gene when my first batch turned out well with few casualties. I’ve had a solid streak of beautiful macarons, dear readers, but alas that has come to an end.
Truth be told I made a batch of chocolate macarons a few months ago and they didn’t turn out spectacular. I coughed it up to bad weather and didn’t blog about it. I had some egg whites in my fridge that needed using up so I decided that it was time to make chocolate macarons once again.
I found this recipe for Chocolate macarons with an espresso ganache on Annie’s Eats and thought it sounded pretty delicious so I forged ahead. Everything seemed to be going okay until it came time to pipe out the macarons. I hadn’t made macarons in a while and I was still getting used to the larger tip, so things generally felt odd. It didn’t feel odd behind repair, I figured a few solid raps of the pan on the counter would fix that, but it did feel odd.
My suspicions were confirmed when I removed the macarons from the oven. They were SO funky looking! Most of them had cracked tops. Some had little pointy domes reminiscent of Hershey’s kisses. They were dull and rough looking. My winning streak was officially over.
I really think I have an issue with making chocolate macarons, I’m not sure what it is though. Maybe it’s the type of cocoa buy? I think next time I will make a batch of “regular” macarons just to restore my confidence in my macaron-making skills. Anyone have any tips on successfully making chocolate macarons?
Horrid looking macarons aside they tasted good. I didn’t have espresso on hand and didn’t want to buy any (I don’t drink coffee) but I did have regular coffee grounds in the cupboard. I gave them an extra grind in the coffee grinder and used those instead. The ganache was great and when I assembled the macarons everything was tasty.
Now I just need another macaron success under my belt….
Check out Annie’s recipe for Chocolate Macarons with an Espresso Ganache here.
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