Original Test Recipe
This recipe/ process did not go the way that I had hoped. I felt confident going into this first test, but I was very quickly proven wrong. The cookies looked more like regular cookies than macarons, and had a weird consistency with bubbles visible in the tops of the shells.
The Original Recipe
What Happened?
When this first batch of macarons came out this way, I immediately started troubleshooting. Proportions and ratios are arguably the most important step when it comes to creating a macaron recipe, because one ratio being off can offset the entire rest of the recipe, which is what I think happened. I started with too big of a batch, and this overwhelmed me, as I was working with a dough that I was uncomfortable with. Another problem that I encountered was the fact that I am 99% sure that I over-mixed my egg whites. I realized this when the wets and the drys weren't coming together the way that I would have liked them to, it took them a while to get to the typical consistency - probably 7-9 minutes of folding, when the macaronage stage is only supposed to last around 4-6 minutes.
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Things started going south when i left my macarons out to dry - and they didn't. I ended up having to put them in the oven without a proper skin formed, but at this point they had been drying for over an hour with no sign of a skin forming, whereas macarons are only supposed to dry for 30 min max. I know that when macarons don't dry, it is a result of the egg whites being over-whipped and the batter not being stable.
Attempt #2
Both of these attempts were done within 4 hours. Given that I was already frustrated, it would probably have been better to wait and try again the next day after sleeping on a possible solution to the problem I faced. With my test bakes, I had more success with recipes that had a 2:1 ratio of powdered sugar to almond flour - however if you look back at the original recipe I used more almond flour to powdered sugar; I believe this was my problem looking back on this bake now. However at the time I didn't realize that, and I didn't adjust my recipe as I should have.
What I Learned
During this series of bakes I learned the importance of ratios. I understood the concept but I realized that one ingredient ratio being altered can change the entire outcome of the recipe. It is super important to understand ratio and ratio differences when making a recipe as specific as macarons because they can be very temperamental during the baking process.