Macarons!!

macaron: n. A chewy cookie made with sugar, egg whites, and almond paste

So Macarons- what can I say?! Don't make them!!!! Ha HaHa! To every baker out there who's successfully made more then 1 batch of macarons you are my heros! People including David Lebovitz who make blogs about fail proof macarons, I proved last week that I can still screw it up! ! :)

Macarons are hard to make, and I knew that! I just had no idea the ratio of fails to triumphs I would be about to encounter! 

Luckily, I didn't freak out when my 1st batch flopped, or the 2nd! However, I did jump up and down for about 45 mins when the 3rd batch came out perfect (ask my husband!) Then the following day I made the vanilla bean buttercream for the red berry macarons (pictured above) and no matter how much icing sugar I added to the buttercream it remained liquid! I must've added at least a bag and a half in the end and still nothing! So the score so far is 2 failed batches of macarons, and failed buttercream. I decided to quit for the evening and start fresh the next morning! And that's exactly what I did- to no avail! I would say that day 2 was probably worse then day 1! 

Day 2 I attempted David Lebovitz chocolate macarons with chocolate ganache! Well there was no point evening making the ganache because yes, count them-1,2,3 batches went into the garbage that day! Booo Hooo! So I made this post with the 1 chocolate macaron that came out and my 3rd batch of red berry ones!

I do have to mention that I decided to make these on probably the biggest heat wave of the year, and I know that didn't help! However, in general these cookies are finicky! Am I giving up all together? No! I have one more recipe  I would like to try in the future... I'm gonna take a break on macarons for now- and after that we'll see where we stand! :)

Have you ever made macarons? What recipe did you use?