Cracked Macaron Black Forest Creams

Imagine the surprise: a tray of cracked macarons on opening the oven door. Don’t despair – it can happen and there are easy reasons why (I’ll tell you below). In the meantime, make these deliciously easy Cracked Macaron Black Forest Creams – chocolate and cherry heaven!

They’re so good, you’ll want to make a batch of macaron shells (perfect or otherwise) just for this gluten-free dessert!

Why Cracked Macarons?

It can happen at times – even with a good macaron recipe.  On opening the oven, there are a few cracked macarons – or even a whole tray of cracked macarons.  Why did this happen? It’s not the end of the world. Jings, even in some expensive Parisian patisseries, I’ve seen them sell a few cracked macarons and they still taste cracking amazing!

In my first book, Mad About Macarons, I have a whole section on troubleshooting all sorts of macaron problems using my French macaron recipe. Cracked macarons are probably because either:

• Your batter is too runny (making the shell weak);
• The egg whites weren’t initially beaten enough;
• Too much final mixing of the batter (macaronnage);
• Too much humidity in the oven.

In our case recently, I made a whole batch and much of this lot cracked simply because I hadn’t cleaned the oven.  Lingering oil on the oven base creates humidity and so the chocolate macarons just cracked up in there.  However, they still tasted wonderful.  I have a neighbour who chucked a whole batch of Italian-meringued macarons in disgust and I never forgave him – perfectionist or not.  Please don’t waste perfectly good macaron shells!  This gluten free dessert below is the answer before your next batch.

Why Don’t My Macarons have Feet?

Another case something went wrong was when Lucie and I made chocolate macarons side-by-side together, preparing them for school.  It was a wonderful time in the kitchen together with her Japanese rock at full blast – but I didn’t think to check her weighing out exactly all the ingredients.  As you can see from the above photo with both our macarons on the same baking tray, her macarons (using the same ingredients, same oven, same baking sheet) didn’t produce feet. Why?  She realised afterwards that she hadn’t measured out the ingredients properly using digital scales: instead of 250g icing (powdered) sugar, she only measured out 100g – that’s a whopping difference!

So, please follow the recipe to the letter and don’t cut down on the sugar – as any changes you make will result in something like no feet!  Incidentally, no macaron feet is also due to runny batter (see above), insufficient airing or oven temperature too low. However, the ingredients used were still so good and they were perfect candidates for the base of this chocolate cherry boozy dessert.

Cracked Macaron Black Forest Creams

If you’ve made these gluten free Macaron Tiramisu desserts, you’ll remember that we left the macaron shells to soak in coffee and Amaretto.  In this case, we’re doing the same but using a Kirsch syrup.  Either pour on the syrup on a filtered tray on top of another tray or simply pour over the macarons in a shallow dish and turn the macarons over, ensuring that each shell is fully coated in the lush boozy syrup and leave overnight or for at least an hour.

Cracked Macaron Black Forest Creams are not just great with boozy cherries but also delicious with raspberries too! Just replace the Kirsch with Chambord raspberry liqueur.

Love Chocolate and Cherries?

Try these Black Forest Chocolate Cream Desserts, as part of the egg yolk recipe collection and save the whites for making macarons. It’s a never-ending delicious cycle! It’s a great recipe using fresh cherries when in season or using Griottine® cherries, preserved in alcohol – or even just good quality tinned cherries.
Make this chocolate cherry macaron ganache to make chocolate cherry macarons.