Yahooooooo! My Macarons have FEET!

I've been delaying my posts for a bit since I've been attempting to perfect my macaron skills and finally....

Letting them dry. Yes plenty of space just incase they were to turn out bad.

Yahoooooo..... the feet (indicated by the yellow arrows) are begining to appear

Out of the oven and cooling away

How exciting and sooooo cute! The feet, the feet! 

Filled them with white choc+cocoa powder+passionfruit syrup ganache. YUM!!!

For a sort of nice filing effect, gently twist the the shells to sandwich the ganache.

This has got to be my 8th or maybe 9th attempt. I was sooooooo happy after seeing them pop up whilst watching them in the oven. Practically dancing around the kitchen with joy.

If you don't know what the 'feet' are on macarons, they are the little frilly like ring at the base of the macaron shell. A.K.A the 'pied'.

I'm thinking that I was successful with trying these tips:

• because its winter right now, I made these in the evening with the heaters on (20 degrees).
• I set let them set for 45 to 50 min. Yeah, I've read many recipes and macaron making tips and some would say that 30min was the max drying time or other wise my macarons would have no feet due to 'over drying'. Glad to know now that the max is 60 min.
• I used 'non-stick' baking paper this time for sure!!!!
• I tried a different macronage method (well the combining of wet and dry ingredients part) from here.

French meringue is easier to make but is more delicate and can be easily over mixed or undermixed. Thats how my macarons failed. The different macaronage method I used ensured that the chances of under/over mixing were less.

• My oven is one of those that are not fanforced and is an old model so I let it heat up to 170 degrees for 5 to 7 min and then when I pop the macarons in to the oven, I lower it to 150 degrees and bake for 15 min at max.

Many of these tips were inspired by some help from Macaron Fetish (I sorta emeailed the owner) and from a basic macaron recipe - French meringue method by You can do it...at home. 

By the way, I was following the basic recipe on Macaron Fetish. It uses one egg so I don't waste very much!There were many times when I thought that this particular recipe was the main problem to my macaron failures but was actually due to the macronage and winter season (?) and perhaps the baking paper too.

Enjoy and for macaron beginners, don't give up! I hope my tips may help too!