Bake 52: French Macaroon Sandwich Cookies

 Um.  I don't know.

I don't know what these are supposed to taste like.  Or be like.  I am thinking I might not be a delicate enough flower (or flour since we are cooking, ha!) to make this kind of thing.  A few of them made it through the process looking perfect, and then I would gouge them with my finger or something (as you can see in the photo).
And have I mentioned my oven hates me?  I really need to get it looked at or throw it off my balcony.  If it isn't shutting off randomly, it's cooking things too quickly or I should say browning things too quickly.  What would Jack and Chrissy do?  Probably call Mr. Roper.  I will go talk to him this week sometime, but I hate it!  Anyway, these were supposed to be baked for 20 minutes and after 10 I took them out because the edges were WAY browner than the ones in the picture.  So I cheated and used a cookie cutter to cut the edges off and make them a perfect circle. 

They had a chewy exterior with a soft interior.  Is that right?  I don't know.  Maybe they are supposed to be crunchier?  I don't know.  I had just made a similar version of the buttercream in our book for Hadlee's cake and the other day threw it away because I was done with the cake.  I didn't love it anyway so whatevs.  This recipe was slightly different since egg yolks were used instead of egg whites.  So I thought I'd give it a try.  I sixthed (is that right?  I don't know) the recipe and also made a no-cook fudge frosting.  While we really liked eating the fudge frosting, I think it might have been too chocolatey and overpowering for such a cookie.  The buttercream was better suited to it.  Even with cutting the recipe so drastically, it still required 5 1/3 TABLESPOONS (that's a 1/3 of a cup, people) of butter and it made enough to fill about 6 sandwich cookies.  So I knew I was eating about 1 T of butter with each cookie.  I didn't eat many (like half a buttercream and half a chocolate).  

Oh and I didn't have almond flour so I ground up some slivered almonds like the book suggested.  And I didn't have enough of those, so I blanched and peeled some almonds and ground them up (after drying them out in the oven from blanching).  I think I might have made it much harder on myself than necessary.  If I had the flour these would have been pretty easy.  The verdict?  I don't know.  I couldn't decide if I liked them or not.  They didn't make me sick but I am not sure if I would crave them.  If you were to put them in front at a party, I am sure I would eat a few.  I am going to need to taste a real one to compare these too.  I think some of the other bakers know better what they are talking about so you can check their blogs.  They were fun to make though and the kids thought filling them was the best thing they'd done all day.  Probably because they ate so much frosting.

Betsy was our host this week.  (Thanks for picking a fun recipe where I got to try something new.)  If you'd like the recipe you can visit her blog HERE.