First attempt at making macarons; properly I mean. Before that I made the "gnarled macarons", which is what you get when you don't care how they look - the taste is the same! Two batches - one had beautiful ruffled "feet" (ugh i hate that term), and other had mostly cracked shells - the difference was the temperature (only have one cookie sheet so I put the piping bag into the fridge which made the batter denser), and also shorter drying time. No matter, I'll eat the cracked ones and bring the perfect ones to work with me.
One thing I noticed is that brownies and macaron batter have roughly similar mouthfeel - chewy, dense (at least the way I made them). This does kinda make sense when looking at the ingredient ratios - they have roughly similar ratios of (well, depends on the brownie of course, but I like them chewy an fudgy) liquid and flour and sugar (in macarons that is the almond four through).
EDIT: If only I learned how to photograph food now ...
EDIT2: It's the NYT recipe. To be frank, I was very puzzled when it called to DEFLATE the air bubbles in the meringue - isn't the purpose of beating the whites to aerate the batter? How does the macaron shell rise then, where are the bubbles the expanding steam should fill? Does the upper dried crust prevent steam escaping and thus it rises by steam making little "vents" at the bottom (the "feet")? Counterintuitive, this deflation process.
