Not a smooth sailing one though as it was considered successful after a number of failed attempts. Before that, studies were made on the internet and soon it was realized that this is a very delicate dessert. Many factors could cause the failure and what's more some issues seems explainable!?!?
Anyway, my first attempt looks OK before baking. But after it was out from the oven, it's easy to see that it was a failed attempt; there's no feet!!! Still remember that it was left resting for hours before a skin was finally formed before it could be brought to the oven.
Forget the taste already but went to do more research after the first attempt and days later it was time to heat up the oven again. It seems better but there's still no feet and it cracked on the top surface!
Back to the internet world to read more, study more and ponder on which areas could be the root causes... not long after another attempt was made. This time round finally there are feets! But the negative sides are still the cracks on top and the feets are lopsided. As usual, it's back to the internet and try to back track on what went wrong.
A couple of more tries in the kitchen yields the same results, but finally the cracked issue was solved after placing another tray below the makalong tray. Guess it prevents the bottom heat from becoming too hot, thus cracking the top, but that wasn't after playing around with the oven temperature, timing and positioning of the tray -_-...
And finally, after trial and error, the issue of lopsided makalong is also solved! The root cause is due to the baking sheet... cannot believe it sia. Apparently the "more expensive" ones are thinner, and flatter maybe, that's why the feets were evenly spread round the bottom!!!
To be continued... :p
