Why my macarons always crack

It's been years since I first started baking macarons and up until today, I'm still getting cracked batches every now and then. It's really frustrating when you followed all the steps and technicalities and it still fails.

Today, i figured the culprit: Oven temperature. Yes, it has nothing to do the my measuring, meringue consistency or mixing. It is the oven temperature. All the while I was baking at 130C but the perfect temperature to bake in my oven (La germania Italia) is only 110C as per my Tala temperature reading. Yes I dont rely on my oven temperature gauge because it's analog and very inaccurate. I also realised that oven temperature fluctuation of 10-30 degree is normal, but note that macarons are very sensitive so you really have to make sure you achieve a steady state before popping your tray. So word of advise: if you think you did nothing wrong in your mixing, measuring and meringue, check temperature. Make sure you preheat it first and let it reach a stable state with no fluctuations in temp. If possible use a separate temperature gauge for accuracy (I'm using Tala). If you don't have one, just lower than the temp in the recipe you're using to -10 degree. If you're still getting cracks, lower it some more. 

See the temp reading in the below picture. No cracks so far. If you noticed the flat feet, that's due to overmixing. 

Halloween cookies with edible prints

Today I decided to play with edible prints because of the so little time in my hands to craft and decorate cookies. Never thought it would be that easy and I even thought it wouldn't make it to the party that night as I read online that sugar icing needs to be dried at least 24hrs. But luckily I read online that blasting a hair dryer or fan in front of it will speed up the drying process. And they were right, it only took 3hrs to dry it. So here it goes:

Finished product: 

Cutting the cookies

Cut cookies in parchment paper

Pasting edible prints in cookie using sugar icing. 

Outlining to cover edges. Need to work on the outlining part obviously but as I said, I don't have much time. Could be better.

Tada! Finished product. Not too bad right?

I used the butter cookie recipe that I posted here in my site. For the sugar icing, its basically just powdered or icing sugar and milk. Just adjust the consistency according to your liking. For this project I made 2 parts: 1 part is thicker for outlining and another part is a bit runny for flooding. 

Have a merry little christmas everyone!

I'm not sure about you but I like Christmas a lot. Not just because of the gift giving but for the joy the season brings. So here's me and my imperfect cover wishing all of my friends and readers a merry little christmas. :)