Macaron FAIL

A few years ago, I was really getting into baking and started seeing recipes for macarons all over the blogs. Certainly I could tackle this simple little French cookie. Well, I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but something went awry with my piping bag and the macaron batter that ended with me covered in it and yelling at Steve that I would never bake again. Melodramatic much?

Of course I've baked many times since then, but I've never made another attempt at macarons...until today. I felt prepared. I studied the recipe. I knew I had this in the bag and was going to prevail over my nummy nemesis.

So I traced 1-inch circles on my parchment paper to use as guides.


I ground my almonds in the food processor.


I measured out my powdered sugar and fancy Dutch process cocoa powder and combined them with the ground almonds in the food processor for a few pulses.


I whipped my egg whites, added granulated sugar, and beat it mixture until I got nice stiff peaks. I was worried because it took me longer than expected to get to this point, but I think I had the speed on my mixer a little too low at the beginning.


I folded the dry ingredients into the meringue. I started noticing things were a little off, as it seemed like I had waaaay too little meringue for the amount of dry ingredients I had. It was really difficult to fold it all of the dry in, and I was left with this really thick batter, which didn't seem right.


In any event, I decided to fill up my pastry bag and pipe the batter onto the parchment paper. Because it was so thick I was able to pipe out only half the number I was supposed to, and they definitely didn't spread out in the circles. I popped them into the oven.


15 minutes later, I had these odd looking, sort of chewy, macaron wannabes.


Needless to say, I didn't waste good chocolate to make the ganache filling for these cookie failures. I'm not discouraged, though. Macarons might have gotten the best of me twice now, but I will one day reign supreme, and that will be a wonderful, wonderful day.

Obviously, I will be seeking a different recipe* for the next attempt. Any suggestions?

*please note: the recipe I used is probably fantastic and there's a strong possibility it was user error, not recipe error, that led me to these blobby cookies.