Macaron tips and troubleshooting

I often get asked about problems people encounter when making macarons and I thought I'd share a few here.

1. Macarons crack in the oven
• Don't be tempted to bake your macarons until a firm skin has formed on the surface of the entire macaron. If there is any part of the macaron which is still wet on the surface, cracks will form when you bake them
2. No feet form when I bake them
• Your initial temperature is too low - start baking at a higher heat and drop down once your feet form after a few minutes if you are concerned about the macarons colouring
3. Macarons have a bumpy appearance
• I always grind my own almonds from scratch - store bought almond meal is generally too coarse and thus will result in a bumpy surface on the macaron
• Grinding almonds alone in a food processor will result in a big lump of oily almond paste. To avoid this, grind equal quantities of almonds and icing sugar together - this prevents the paste from forming, and saves you sifting the icing sugar! This mixture is called a tant-pour-tant
4. Always follow the recipe you are using - there are two main methods (some say three, but we won't complicate things here):
• French Method: this involves raw egg whites being beaten to a stiff meringue with a small amount of castor sugar. A tant-pour-tant isn't used in this method as there is generally double the amount of icing sugar to almond meal used in this method. This method is faster and less of a hassle than the Italian method below, but is not suitable for making large batches and is pore prone to failure. Most of the amateur cook books and cooking magazines use this method (eg. Women's Weekly, Donna Hay etc.)
• Italian Method: this involves making an Italian meringue using a hot sugar syrup and half of the egg whites, and mixing in the other half of the egg whites with the tant-pour-tant. This method is favored by the likes of Pierre Herme and Adriano Zumbo and is great for making large batches (up to 100 macarons). The failure rate for this method is low.

Hopefully this helps with your next macaron attempt - feel free to email me with any questions I haven't addressed above!