French Macaroons - originally posted on May 15/13

I love those pretty little cookies in pretty pastel colours you can buy at fancy bakeries.  So light and crispy and sweet.  And so pretty.
How hard can they be?  So I found a recipe and made them.  They are a little more time consuming than your average cookie, but they are not difficult.
4 egg whites
6 Tbsp sugar
1 100 g package ground almonds
1 1/3 cup icing sugar
Preheat oven to 320 degrees F (160 degrees C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicon mat.
Whisk egg whites in a clean metal mixing bowl until thick, about 5 minutes; whisk the sugar into the egg whites until thick, glossy, and the mixture holds stiff peaks, 5 to 8 more minutes. Place a sieve over the bowl containing egg whites and sieve both amounts of almond meal and confectioners' sugar into the egg white mixture. Gently fold the almond meal and icing sugar into the egg whites, retaining as much air as possible. Spoon the meringue into a piping bag fitted with a 3/8-inch tip. Pipe 1-inch disks of meringue onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between cookies.
Let the cookies stand at room temperature for about 15 minutes to form a thin skin. Pick up the baking sheets and let drop from several inches above the work surface to adhere cookies to the baking sheets.
Bake in the preheated oven until tops are dry, about 15 minutes; let cool completely on the baking sheets before peeling off the parchment paper.
Smear a little bit of filling on a cookie and create a sandwich.  I used blackberry jam.  I think smooth peanut butter and jam would work, Nutella would be awesome.  I wonder if lemon curd would work?
You can tint the meringue by added food colouring in any colour you like.  I can't wait to experiment with different colours and flavours.

Next time I'll take pictures and add them here.