Almond Macaroon Failure

I did title this blog “(Mis)Adventures with Food” so you’ve probably been asking yourself, “where are all these mis-adventures anyway? This girl seems like a damn fine cook!” Well, here you go. 

Failure number one: I tried to make almond macaroons today. It seemed simple enough with just three ingredients: sugar, egg whites, and ground almonds. The only successful thing here was grinding up the almonds in my food processor. For starters, the recipe calls for five egg whites. Really, one egg white probably would have been sufficient. The “dough” was really more like a runny goop. “Spoon out ping pong ball-sized bits of dough and put them on the pan” the cookbook instructed. What happened here were NOT balls of dough, but rather a runny mess all over my pan. I tried to add a little flour to help out the so-called “dough”, but it really didn’t do anything to make the mixture less of a liquid. My first batch of cookies came out of the oven nearly taking over the whole pan in a burnt, crispy disaster.

Try number two: Add more flour to the batter and cook on tin foil. Hmmm. I suppose it helped A LITTLE. Of course, the cookies did not want to remove themselves from the tin foil after cooking. So what I have are hard, broken cookie bits.

Try number three: More flour, more flour, and (you guessed it) MORE FLOUR. These ones actually came out of the oven looking like cookies. And they actually removed themselves from the tin foil! Medium success!

Try number four: Much more of the same. (Oh yeah, this picture is of batch 4. What I like to call "The Good Ones".)

Try number five: More flour. Oh yeah, now it's actually starting to resemble dough! And these one's aren't flat. (That's the picture of the blobs/rocks sitting on tin foil.)

Well, overall this was pretty much a disaster that ate up three hours of my time this afternoon. Someone please explain to me the art of making macaroons because I clearly was not successful. I still can't believe there wasn't any flour in this recipe. Anyone want some chewy macaroon rocks? I don’t have the patience for any more kitchen time today… I think I will be eating out for dinner.

Score: 1 out of 10.