Macaruins?

Macaroons are something I had never even heard of until this challenge. Though I understand that they are rather a lot more widespread than I thought when I discovered them. To those uninitiated - like my good self - they are basically tiny meringues sandwiched together with a filling of some sort.
To my absolute terror and shock, they are the very first thing in my challenge which has had zero dairy products... That's right, no butter, no cream, no thing to make my heart whimper and suffocate as I choke down those extra calories. Though I must say, the heart aches at the absence of butter from today's diet, I feel a little emotional about it... Well, as emotional as one can get about food!
Another first on today's challenge was that it was the first time I'd ever had a chance to use a piping bag. I sincerely hope it will be the last as well, I think that it might have been the most useless cooking tool I've ever had the displeasure to use. Although when full of mixture it did an excellent job of making lovely rounds of macaroon mixture when it was running low it just created a mess... Literally, I had nut mixture all over my hands, two spoons were unrecognisable from the mess and a spatula was really feeling the strain of usage. In short, I don't think I've ever had a less useless kitchen implement ever. For a start, it took an absolute age trying to spoon the mixture into the bag to begin with, and I'm lucky I had my lovely Sous Chef ( My beautiful girlfriend) to help. On my own it would have been pretty much impossible; how on earth are you meant to scoop something into a paper bag without it losing its shape and flopping all over the place. Macaroon mix was on the outside of the bag, the inside of the bag, my hands, cutlery and of course all the surfaces I'd even come anywhere near to touching. In short, I wish I'd just spooned it onto the baking sheets!
However badly this process ended up being, somehow everything went swimmingly from there onwards. Thankfully I carefully followed the recipe and left them to settle at room temperature for half an hour ( two weeks ago I may have misread that and cooked it for thirty minutes instead!) before baking for the last ten minutes.

The Result: 

Ok, let's face it, they aren't exactly the most aesthetically pleasing baked goods I've ever made and they certainly aren't quite as circular as the picture in the book looked. yet, they taste absolutely delicious, they are far softer and dainty than I had imagined, they certainly aren't biscuits or cakes but are, I think, far better than both! I am looking forward to making the vanilla macaroons (coming to a blog post near you soon) but there's something nicer about scraping the nutella into these knowing that they are going to taste gorgeous! They're a real treat!