Macarons, take 2!

I posted about making french almond macarons (not coconut macaroons, although I made those too) recently. In a nutshell, it was a slightly different cooking technique, not too hard, had few ingredients.... but they didn't turn out so great.

They took forever to cook (about twice as long as the recipe said) and crinkled weirdly on top. And then I overcooked one batch and they were rock-hard. Well, they were all rock-hard.

My first thought was: my oven temperature's not accurate. So I bought an oven thermometer, made cupcakes at 375oF, and found that if anything, the oven temp was slightly higher than it should be. Hmm, weird.

But then, after making gelato with 8 egg yolks, I had a lot of white sitting around. And I heard that a friend of mine goes nuts for macarons and paid $1 EACH for some from a French Bakery in town. Well hello, I guess I need to make more.

And you know what? I followed the same recipe, did everything the same (except these egg whites had been in tupperware in the fridge for a week, not on the counter, loosely covered, for 1 day), and they came out perfectly.
Don't they look like something you'd buy?

So what the problem was: my oven temperature is slightly off- at higher temps, 375 and up, it's slightly higher than normal, but after preheating for 30 min to get it to 300oF, the thermometer read at only 260. So that's the problem. I fussed and got the temp up, baked, and they did great.

Clint voted for green macarons, and I used the lemon frosting from my previous post to fill them- buttercream would be better, this is a little gooey- but still tasty.

Maybe I should open up shop and sell these babies for $1 each. I think I got about 20-25 cookies from this batch- not including the 4 that "didn't survive" to the frosting stage, or the 2 I ate... or the ones that Clint ate without telling me.