Chocolate with Francois - Chocolate Macarons

This is my first time to participate in Chocolate with Francois.  Of course I wanted the end result to be perfect, so perfect that you would all be uber impressed with my baking abilities.  Well you know when you start out with that attitude, chances are something will go wrong.  And it did.  I had no idea what these were supposed to look like so I just winged it.  I should have googled them first, because after I made them, I googled and found a photo and mine are. . . shall we say . .  a little fluffy in comparison!  And. . .  I made these twice. 

The first time, I overcooked my syrup and it was 260 instead of the 250 required.  I also took it off the stove and it sat for just a nano-second while I was getting ready to pour it into the beating eggwhites.  When I poured into my egg whites, it turned to a big sugar lump.  I forged ahead however thinking it would beat up, mix up and work.  Also, when I mixed the egg whites into the dry ingredients, it was like a big ball of goo.  At this point I should have admitted defeat, but no not me.  Still I forged on.  I piped them onto the silpat mat and they were very flat.  After fifteen minutes, I looked at them and thought, "this is meringue.  It is supposed to be fluffy."  So I dumped them off the sheet into the garbage and decided to start over.   Washed all the dishes up and began again with a new fresh attitude.

This time, I beat all the egg whites at once.  I watched the sugar very carefully and as soon as it hit the 250 mark I poured.  Worked like a charm.  Then I gently folded in the dry ingredients.  Now that my courage overran my abilities, and thinking surely I must now be superior to Francois, I thought, why pipe.  I could drop by teaspoonfuls and eyeball it and make perfect circles of heavenly bliss.

Of course, in the end, Francois was the superior one and my redneck macarons were mountainous and not perfect circles at all.  But when they came out of the oven, ohhhh they are delicious.  Because I am impatient, I ate one immediately and burned the roof of my mouth!  I would have to say it was worth it.  At least the ganache was pretty straight forward and easy to make. I used my standby Ghirardelli chocolate.  I'm definitely going to try these again maybe at the holidays when my children are home to enjoy.

I am excited to be in this group and I hope I can keep up with all the fabulous members.  One of my favorite bloggers Leslie of Lethally Delicious hosted this group this month and made this excellent pick.  You can click on her link and see how hers turned out and get the recipe there too if you want to try these.