When Macarons Go Terribly Wrong.

About a month ago I made Totoro Macarons for a bake sale my friend invited me to. I used Rosanna Pansino's recipe on her Nerdy Nummies YouTube video. I was so excited, it was my first time making macarons and only a couple of them cracked, they had feet and looked pretty good!

Look at those gorgeous looking feet. I thought it was a macaron miracle, especially for my very first attempt at such a temperamental little bugger of a cookie. They were a hit at the bake sale so a month later when I found a Banana Nutella Macaron recipe I figured, "Hey, I made them once before, I can do it again no problem!"

NOPE.

I don't know if it was beginner's luck with the first batch or if the macaron gods were just smiling upon me that fateful day but today they were not kind. Everything that could go wrong with these cookies did. They didn't get feet. They cracked. They got some kind of terrible puffy that made them look like hot cross macarons. 

Macarons are not supposed to look like sandollars. They just aren't. What's even more upsetting about this whole thing is that the macarons totally played me. I piped them out, tapped the pan to get all the air out and let them dry for 20 minutes. They looked perfect at this point, WAY better than my Totoros at this stage so I was really excited that these cookies would look gorgeous.

But it wasn't meant to be. I should have known something was wrong when it took me so long to fold the meringue with the dry ingredients. The batter got extremely stiff and wasn't getting to the macaronage stage I wanted. I think it may have been too much dry ingredients that was the main cause for my macaron fail...that and the batter could have still been undermixed, even though the batter was melting back in on itself and flowing in a lava-like ribbon, which is the state you want it in according to macaron expert, Brave Tart.

Imagine my face of utter baking sadness when I pulled these out. I spent TWO HOURS whipping, sifting, measuring, food processoring, macaron-aging and piping and this is what I get. Like I said, they have no feet on them, I probably should have let them dry a bit longer before I baked them. Or they could have cracked because the heat hit the cookies too fast, which is why some bakers recommend double cookie sheets when you're making macarons. 

Even though these macarons were what I consider to be a baking fail, it definitely taught me a lesson in macaron baking. I was upset for a little while but you learn a lot more from your baking mistakes than your baking successes. Plus, it could have been worse, these little guys didn't look like the fancy macarons they should have but they sure tasted amazing! But really, how can you go wrong with bananas and Nutella?

Sound off on your baking horror stories below!