Ce n'est pas un macaron.

I made macaroons for the first time today. Or rather, I attempted to make macaroons for the first time today.  First, though, check this out - even grocery store eggs are chicken feather fresh around here. 

Anyway, back to the macaroons.  These do not look like your average macaroons, that's for sure.  After piping them onto the baking parchment you're supposed to smooth them with a little water and your fingertips and I think I didn't use quite enough water.  I can see spots that are smooth and macaroon-like on a few of them and I'll bet that was due to freshly wet fingers so, next time, more water.   My chocolate macaroons look more like Hobnobs (which I tried for the first time yesterday and love).

(The above tea cup is my favorite of all the thrifted cups and saucers we used for my wedding reception)

Honestly, I've never had a macaroon so I really can't say whether or
not these taste right - are macaroons supposed to taste like a chewy almond?  I used a recipe from the most recent issue of Good Food but also found an identical recipe (sans cocoa) online so I'm assuming they do.  I like the idea of more sugar, less almond left by the first commenter on that article and might give that a go next time.  My ground almonds were also a bit coarse so I'll take the suggestion of "whizzing" them down as well. 

I also think lots of filling is the key to a good chocolate macaroon because everything is better with more chocolate.  This recipe is from a section on low fat chocolate treats (ahem, isn't that an oxymoron?) so they skimped on the amount of chocolate filling - 50 grams of chocolate makes about enough to fill five cookies (especially if if you're going to make them look like the macaroons in their photo), not a dozen.  I liked the strange chewy texture of them, though, so I'm looking forward to making another batch maybe with strawberry jam and some red food coloring this time...mmmmm....