Last night I tried baking macarons for the first time. On the bake off James Morton used to whip them up so quickly. “How hard can it be?” I thought.
Using a slightly dubious recipe from the interweb I made some chocolate macarons. Although they taste ok, the texture is too grainy and they are not quite how they should be. I thought I had done it all by the book: the resting to form a skin, sieving the ground almonds, weirdly opening the oven door during cooing to let out steam…
They may not have worked properly this time around but I now have the bug. I will keep you posted on take two. Here is a pick of the piped macaron pre-baking.
pistachioplum 
I had the exactly the same thing happen to me! Macaroon’s are far too difficult!