Macaroons

I finally got to make macaroons! I have been dreaming about making them...

I didn't exactly anticipate the complications. I wanted to make 2 kinds, but with some parts the same, some parts different...
The first batch (plain) wasn't much of a success. After a long time of complicated measuring (halving, dividing etc) we tried to make the meringue, but it was so runny even after ages of blending. We never got 'stiff peaks'.
So we just folded in the dry ingredients and dolloped them, but they just ran and spread so thin. We tried to hold them back together but nothing worked so we just put them in the oven. 
We tried to fix them again after being in the oven for a while, but it didn't work.
They rose a bit (hopes up!) but flattened again (hopes gone...)
They came out really really thin..... They tasted good but were like wafers! 

We then found out that the bowl for the meringue has to be SPOTLESS and the eggs should have warmed up for a while. The second batch of eggs had warmed up while making the others and I made the bowl spiffy clean. 
This time I made a gorgeous meringue.

I piped them (:D) and let them sit (I could do that because they didn't run) and I sprinkled some hagelslag (Dutch chocolate sprinkles). 

The frostings were generally okay. They were quite melty because of all the butter and the frosting tasted tasted of butter...But a thin layer tasted good. 
The peanut butter frosting was better than the cocoa. I frosted the chocolate cookies and a couple of plain 'wafer' cookies. I put wayyy too much frosting which made them really gooey, so I scraped out a bunch and they tasted good.
The cookies rose really tall, so they were much more elongated than macaroons should be. But it was a good experience :) I'm planning to send some to my nani and nana for my nani's birthday if dad goes there on business, because my nani is an amazing pastry chef-- but my macaroons are a little embarrassing...