Chocolate French Macaron: not! super FAIL

I was curious about French Macarons after reading an article on David Lebovitz's blog. David Lebovitz is an ex-pastry chef and an established cookbook author based in Paris. I don't exactly remember how I came to bookmark his site, must've been because I would be googling the words "best food blogs" often after I got addicted to baking.

French Macarons are small delicate and colorful confectioneries made mostly of egg whites, sugar and ground almond. It has a flat base with ruffled circumference (foot), a smooth dome thin crust which is egg-shell like and its insides soft and almost meringue like in texture. A complete macaron would be a flavored filling sandwiched between two macaron cookies.

Egg whites, sugar, ground almonds? Hah! Such simple ingredients! This one is an easy bake.

Ooops... spoke too soon. 

I had several issues to deal with while baking these:

1. I couldn't find ground almonds. So I relied on the substitution lists and found that whole/sliced almonds processed in a blender/grinder would replace ground almonds. Now, almonds have oil content, when I finished grinding them, they turned out to be a bit damp and formed clumps. Researched and read too late that heating the almond meal in the oven would help them to dry up.
2. The recipe called for Dutch-processed cocoa powder. Stupid me, I was at the grocery and found a bag of the Dutch-processed variety but didn't get it. We have a tin of natural cocoa powder which turned out to be rather different from the Dutch. Has something to do with the unique process of the Dutch which involves alkalizing cocoa to neutralize its pH level. (yes, there is a science to this). Again, substitution: adding baking soda to the natural cocoa powder.
3. I thought I could use wax paper, but it turns out that wax paper can only be used for baking cakes, not for cookies! Stupid me again for not getting the baking sheets in the grocery. I wanted to gamble on wax paper but chickened out because of the scary things people are saying about using wax paper as lining when baking cookies (smoking, flaring, crayola taste, etc). Went for the foil method instead.
4. I think I over-zealously beaten and folded the egg whites. Tsk.

Horrid looking macarons! :(

As you can see from above, the cookies have no feet, cracked domes, overly crunchy and hollowed centers! Thought about throwing them out to hide evidence of a failed experiment, but thought about how many hours I slaved over this. They were edible at least, nutty chocolate taste  (like peanut kisses) melt in your mouth (like meringue candies). So I guess I just made tiny Chocolate Almond Meringue candies?

I wouldn't be trying this again any time soon though, not until I'm able to get ingredients, tools and info right. It's too meticulous to deal with and needing finesse in technique. I'm still a throw-'em-in-there kinda person, which is undesirable when recreating masterpieces like the French Macaron.

If you want to give it a shot, you can find the recipe I tried to follow here.