Chocolate with Francois-Macaron Nirvana

First of all thanks to Leslie from Lethally Delicious for selecting this month's recipe in the Chocolate with Francois challenge. Macarons-Chocolate ones with creamy chocolate ganache. Check out Leslie's post and her beautiful results .  And my apologies to my fellow bakers for my late posting this month for our Chocolate with Francoise challenge.

Each time I start a recipe of macarons I get that awful feeling in my stomach-that tightening and feeling of dread.  I hate to start baking with that dread.  I'm of the belief that your mood and spirit effect the end results of what you are baking.  I want my love of baking and my passion for baking to infuse itself into the results-not the bad juju of dread !  So when I started this month's challenge I decided that I wasn't going to start baking until I put myself into macaron nirvana .   Watching the meringue go around and around  in my Kitchenaid helped me to meditate and relax and think nothing but good macaron thoughts.   I was so occupied with having a positive outlook and feeling good about this macaron experience I wasn't paying attention to the amount of batter I was making.  Hmm 3 1/2 cups of powdered sugar seemed like a lot from other recipes but I knew this was the Italian meringue method so I just chalked it up to the recipe.  As I was watching the meringue, I kept thinking hmm that's a lot of meringue.  And I  mean a full to the rim lot of meringue  whisking around in the bowl I looked at the yield on the recipe...50 macarons.  50, really, how large is Francois making his macarons ? Because by the time I finished my baking I ended up with almost 150 !!  Thank goodness we have a BBQ this week at work-guess what I'm taking for dessert ??  

I've always loved making Italian meringue-it's amazing that something so beautiful and smooth and delicious starts out as egg whites and boiling sugar.  Anyway putting myself in that macaron state of mind made a difference..my little babies have feet..So I did what all of us do when we see the feet-the hallelujah macaron dance around the oven-  Remember the song Footloose ?  Well picture me dancing around the kitchen to that tune but substituting words like Footloose,everyone has feet,everyone has feet..OK it doesn't take much to amuse me-you've learned my secret. 

Making that many macarons tired me out so I saved the ganache for tonight. I just finished filling all 150 of them and I'm macaron'd out ! Can anyone out there tell me the secret to nice smooth even macarons-I know a great deal of it is practice but seriously I sifted my almond flour and powdered sugar 3 times and still ended up with quite a few bumpy macarons. Que sera sera..they still tasted wonderful. But any advice would be greatly appreciated.