If you are following along, this is lesson #10 of my macaron mishaps. I will call this one renewed hope. Last time I attempted the world’s most difficult cookie, I nearly gave up. Every mistake possible happened in that last batch. But then something amazing happened.

After finding out my oven’s temperature was way off when trying to make shortbread, excitement bubbled inside of me. Depending on what temperature I selected, the oven would vary from 25 – 60 degrees. I scrubbed the oven which helped slightly. In the end, we ended up both adjusting the internal temperature and relying on the $10 temperature gauge. With a little tweaking, we learned how to work with what we had.

I baked batch after batch of cookies, cakes and bread until I felt comfortable with various temperatures and what to expect from this new knowledge. I wrote down a chart to know what to set my dial to get the expected temperature. Things like set your dial at 300F (150C) and in reality, have 340F (170C) temperature. But I could work with the flaws. It was still a functioning oven even if the dial was wonky. I was actually pretty thrilled to discover this issue once and for all. It explained so much.

With that in mind, I was sure this would be the batch of macarons to succeed. I was wrong. On the plus side, they were no longer overly browned. Just a little over-baked. They were still hollow, but not as bad. Next time will be perfect. Surely as today I had renewed hope. After all, I am not the type to give up without a fight. Although, to be honest I was feeling a bit woozy.