Macaron experiment

I'm making another two batches of macarons.  This time I'm going to try and cut down on the sugar in the shells.  I'm going from 150g of powdered sugar to 100g.  To keep the mass of dry ingredients the same, I'll be upping the almond meal from 150g to 200g.

Results:  Okay, just finished the biscuits.  The sweetness level is definitely lower, but I'm noticing some textural differences as well.

• When I take them out of the oven, I'm noticing the foot has a good height, but once it cools for a while, the foot shrinks.
• The outer shell still forms, but is thinner, and the base of the biscuit is a bit cakey.  There is a hollow space between the crispy top of the biscuit and the dense bottom.  This makes it more fragile and more likely to crack.
• The smaller biscuits turned out better because it got cooked more thoroughly and the bottoms turned out more solid.

Overall, I'm not crazy about the change in texture.  I think I swung too far with replacing the powdered sugar with almond flour.  Next time, let's replace just 25g.  (Yeah, I'm using binary search.  Let's make use of this CS degree.)

I'll report back on the ganache once that's done.

Some photos from the process after the page break...