Macaroons: Revisited

One thing you have to know about me is that I never give up. Once I put my mind to something, I don't stop until I reach my goal. Two blogposts ago I attempted to make macaroons. I felt utterly defeated. I then took on the challenge of defeating the temperamental recipe. For a little over the past month, I have used the same Martha Stewart Recipe to make 5 new batches and slowly, slowly I've made my macaroons!!!


Attempt 1: Buttercream Filling
You all saw this mishap already.

Attempt 2: Buttercream Filling
The same thing happened this time except they were blue.

Attempt 3: Nutella Filling
Then I made these! They looked super professional and totally awesome. Then I bit into them and they were hollow! A hallow shell! It was like eating air. What a tease. At this point I bought a real sifter and beat the eggs for about 10 minutes in stead of the 8 minutes I had previously tried.

Attempt 4: Chocolate Filling
These ones were also hallow and I think I made them too small. And I think they spent too much time in the oven. However, my roommate's family was over and managed to eat a majority of the cookies before I could even put in the filling. At this point, I bought a thicker cookie sheet. I think that has helped a little bit.

Attempt 5: Apricot Filling
Like the recipe suggests, after 5 minutes of baking, I rotated the pan. When I did that I was so excited because these babies were looking absolutely perfect. When they were finished I opened the oven and they had totally bottomed out! They were also hollow. I think the problem here was that I didn't let the dough sit for 15 minutes after I had piped the dough onto the baking sheet.

Attempt 6: Raspberry Filing!
I made these babies yesterday! I took them out of the oven and bit into a warm cookie. They were prefect!!! Not hollow at all! This time I decided to not add any food coloring, thinking that the food coloring might be hurting the recipe. I also tried a new brand of almond milch. I decided to try Trader Joe's Almnod Milch and I think it worked better. They also tasted a lot better. The other brand I use to use was Bob's Red Mill. Trader Joe's is also a lot cheaper than Bob's Red Mill so I think I will be sticking to my new almond milch.

I put a few in the freezer and tried them this morning. There were really good a little frozen too. I then set them out on the table. They had thawed a little and they tasted even better than straight out of the oven. I still think these ones need to be a little bigger but I'll totally be making these again and trying other fillings.