Much Ado About Macaroons

So… have you ever looked longingly at a recipe and wanted to try it? Oh how cool these would be! I need to try these!
That’s how I felt about French Macaroons!
They looked so cool! Andy even noticed my interest in them and bought me a book for Christmas that was just on Macaroons! How exciting!
So with gusto I learned about making them – I did lots of googling, looked at my favorite blogs for tips and suggestion, hunted FOREVER to find the most expensive pound of flour I’d ever encountered – almond flour – and I was ready!! I learned that I should “age” the egg whites – sit them out for a day. Ok… did that… check! READY to start!!
In all my research I guess I didn’t really look too closely at how to pipe out these little gems. Mine looked like pinwheels. Oh well – they were going to taste awesome – so who cares how they looked.
They came out of the oven – they weren’t perfect – but I am not a professional baker so who cares right? My first inkling of badness was when I couldn’t get some of them off the Silpat. Um… NOTHING sticks to Silpat… how could this happen? Gradually my frustrations grew… I had chocolate ganache for them – yet another thing I was excited about… slathered some on – took a bite… um… no. All this work and build up? I didn’t even like it.
So since hindsight is 20/20 – I thought about this. Before getting a book, before buying insanely expense almond flour, perhaps I should have – you know – actually TRIED one of these silly things. I could have said – huh… they are cute… but not really for me. Nope… I went ALL the way and made the silly pinwheel cookies. At least Andy enjoyed them. He said they were good – I’ll trust him.