Failure Macarons Cake

Macarons are the most high-maintenance dessert to make. You need perfect ingredients that are measured out perfectly and you need to make them on a perfectly non-humid day and your oven needs to be perfectly calibrated; it's pretty easy to mess up.

I made lemon macarons for my friend's bridal shower and since it was an "experimental" recipe (I'd never made this particular flavor before) I didn't realize that the oils in the lemon zest would cause the batter to be a little flatter. That meant I had a few batches come out of the oven looking like yellow Mentos (yeah, the freshmaker) instead of cute frilly macarons.

No worry though, because I turned the duds into little chocolate cakes.

Ingredients:
1 stick butter
4 oz. 100% cacao chocolate
200 g failure macarons
1 egg + 1 egg white
½ cup sugar
pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
*Let's say you wanted to make this cake and you don't have any failed macarons, just substitute in 75g almond flour and 125 g icing sugar.

You'll want to start by melting the butter and chocolate together in a small saucepan over low heat.

Set the chocolate aside to cool slightly and move onto the next few ingredients.

In a large bowl, whip up the eggs and add in some salt and vanilla. Slowly drizzle in the warm chocolate, whisking continuously (lest you prefer scrambled eggs in your cake batter).

You should end up with a gloppy, sloppy chocolate mess.

Whizz up the cracked, feetless, dull macarons in a food processor until you end up with coarse crumbs.

Whisk the macaron crumbs into the batter.

Pour the batter into greased muffin tins or cute little ramekins. This is a super rich, dense cake so smaller portions are recommended.

Bake these cuties in at 300F oven just until they're set, about 12 to 15 minutes. If you like molten cakes, take these out of the oven somewhere between 8 and 10 minutes.

Let them cool slightly before plopping them out onto a dish.

These cuties are super decadent and moist and chocolatey and sweet. Obviously, mine had a twinge of lemon flavor since I used lemon macarons. A blob of whipped cream would've definitely been appropriate here to cut the richness a bit but if you've got a sweet tooth, just dive in.

Here's the recipe page: