The Great Macaroon Adventure

So, I tried French Macaroons, using this recipe and well, here they are. A few things that are good--they have "feet" and they are not hollow on the inside...nice chewy texture inside with, and the tops didn't crack. However, they are not smooth on top...which means, at my best guess that my almond meal needed to be ground finer than it was.

I have read that you can smooth out the tops with a fingertip and water, and that tapping the pan (like I do with cakes) can help them flatten out. *sigh*

I should point out that I made powdered sugar Splenda (a combination of Splenda and cornstarch processed together until it resembles actual powdered sugar) and used that instead of actual sugar-sugar. I don't think this had anything to do with the lumps--I really should have ground the almond meal to a finer consistency.

While researching the issue, I found a wealth of posts and articles about the difficulty of making French Macaroons--the fact that humidity will screw with them, getting them the same size is impossible (unless you have one of these) and egg white are tricky no matter what.

They really do taste good, though--I opted for the almond extract in this batch, although I think they would be good without it, or with a lemon or orange flavor. I used Nutella as the filling since that's what I had handy (come on, like Nutella isn't good on *everything* anyway) and I thought it would taste good with the almond.

At any rate, I will be trying these again. The cookie piper worked fairly well for getting a somewhat even amount, but I was trying to make rounds instead of just letting them round out on their own. And heck no, the recipe did not make 84 cookies...not even close.