Chocolate Macarons: Take One

So finally I worked up the courage to attempt french macarons. The problem with macarons are that you have so many articles that will say certain details are crucial to the perfect macaron and others that say they don't matter at all. 

So I decided to take the advice of one of my favourite bloggers: http://cakejournal.com/tutorials/how-to-make-macarons/.

And here is the series of (unfortunate?) events that occurred in the process of trying to make chocolate macrons.

Things I don't own and probably should have owned in order to make these macarons:
-Food Processor
-Kitchen Scale
-Large Round Tip (I usually just use the large coupler and it works just fine...)

Step one of the recipe was to grind the almonds into a powder. My blender has a grind button so it seemed simple enough until the blender stopped working and started smoking. After this catastrophe I needed to convert the weight measurements to cups which was partially done for me except the conversions provided did not match the conversions I found on websites I normally used for this kind of thing. So which was right? I went with cake journal on the conversions.

The meringues went okay. They were not as glossy as described in the recipe but they were stiff enough not to move when I flipped the bowl upside down. The problem was the consistency after folding in the dry ingredients was off. I find I often have this problem with folding because I tend to over-mix to ensure that is mixed enough. So the mixture turned out too thin and dripped everywhere while I was trying to pipe it. I mean globs the size of your fist on the counter, the roll of parchment paper and all over my hands.

So there were more problems with this recipe than things that went right so when I got 3 macarons out of the recipe I was kind of ecstatic! (Did I mention when making the the ganache the cream boiled over too?!) So next time I bake I need make sure to avoid ladders and black cats. Also I need to buy a couple things...