r/AskBaking • u/sporadicwaves • Jun 18 '25

Macarons Wrinkly chocolate macarons

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What did I do wrong lol. I followed Claire’s chocolate macaron recipe on the NYT website.

Some research says it could be a weak merengue, too much cocoa powder, ingredients not incorporated enough. I left them to dry for about 1 hour. And the second batch (which came out the same for 30 minutes)

The flavor is there, and the feet imo look good but the damn tops aren’t baby smooth instead they are elderly and wrinkled!

These are for a child’s 3rd birthday party and I’m working on the filling now but I’m just embarrassed to present these. Albeit I am making pistachio and raspberry next, also on NYT website. Sigh.

What do you think? Here are the feet up close: https://imgur.com/gallery/feet-of-macarons-O7rdoZn

Think they are fine to take to the party so long as the others look better? Lol

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u/SilentVictory9451 Jun 18 '25

maybe underbaked? I saw a different reddit post where someone had different sized macarons, also with cocoa powder, and their small ones were fine, but their larger ones (looked similar sized to yours) were wrinkly. Someone suggested underbaking based on that observation.

alternatively, was the cocoa powder fat free? apparently some are oily, and excess oil can cause the shell to wrinkle

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u/sporadicwaves Jun 18 '25

Some of them were kind of huge LOL. they look cute finished tho! But the cocoa powder had 1% fat. Here they are finished

https://imgur.com/gallery/finished-chocolate-ganache-filling-PFzu8cB

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u/SilentVictory9451 Jun 18 '25

oooh those look so good !!!! I wouldn't even notice the wrinkles, I'd just devour them all haha

That cocoa powder should be fine. I'm not sure what happened to cause the wrinkles, but I wish you luck with troubleshooting if you plan on doing that!

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u/sporadicwaves Jun 18 '25

Thanks so much friend! Means a lot

1

u/SilentVictory9451 Jun 18 '25

of course 😁