A few weeks ago, I mentioned on Facebook that it was a peculiar kind of humility that one experiences when one attempts to bake something that one had been proficient at before and fails miserably. In this case, it was macarons.

Some time ago, I had gotten a bee in my bonnet to perfect French macarons, and I devoted quite a bit of time, dozens of eggs, and cups and cups of sugar and almond flour to getting them just right. I was so proficient with them that I could even be a bit lazy and ‘whip them up’ without paying too much attention, and they still turned out beautifully.

I hadn’t made them in a while before a few weeks ago, though, and as the saying goes, pride goeth before a fall. They turned out terribly! They tasted fine, but they looked disastrous. No lovely, shiny crust. No “feet” at the base of the cookies. They were hard and felt almost hollow inside, more like a meringue than a macaron. The flavor was good, but they were all wrong, and I took that personally.

So today was my rematch with macarons, and I’m delighted to say I prevailed! In fact, not only did I prevail, but I actually improved upon my process. Determined to get the beautiful crust and feet so characteristic of macarons, I decided to leave nothing to chance. Instead of relying on the ambient air in the kitchen to dry them, I opted to try oven-drying them, and it worked beautifully! It required some active monitoring, but that was well worth it for the reduction in drying time: from 90 minutes to only eight.

I colored half a light brown and filled them with semi-sweet chocolate ganache, and I colored the other half pink and filled them with a combination of ruby chocolate ganache and raspberry jam – the ganache piped around the edge to contain the jam so I didn’t have to futz with making a gelatin filling with the jam to get it to stay put. I think I’ll go with a smaller fitting for the ruby chocolate ganache next time so I can fit more jam in there, but that’s a small nitpick. Overall, though: success!