Caution: The following post is light on common sense and heavy on the photography, for which I apologize to my dial-up-using friends.
Call it Bakerina’s Paradox: I’ve been a bit down of late, as those unfortunate enough to speak with me lately know, and even when I’m feeling just fine, I can be brought low in an instant by baking gone wrong, like a cake that falls apart upon decanting from the tin, or bread that collapses on its journey from brotform to baking stone. Yet these would-be macarons, which are about as wrong as baking can get, left me not despondent but amused:
Before I deconstruct these little miseries, though, I do owe everyone who has visited this page, as well as those of you who have called, written, offered advice and goodies and generally been just plain good folks, a little explanation and a lot of apology. Yes, I have been getting your messages; I’ve just been a pill about acknowledging them, and for that, I’m sorry. (Confidential to Pauline: The antipodean sunshine has been very, very, very welcome. Thank you, my dear.) No, I’ve not been ill, although I’m slightly under the weather now with a mild cough/laryngitis cycle that may be part of the annual autumnal viral cloud, or may be something I picked up in LuthorCorp’s new office, which is literally being constructed around us. Lloyd, however, was very sick through most of August and part of September with a bad bronchial infection. He’s better now, and once again able to sleep on his back, to my deep and copious relief. The LuthorCorp office move took place over Labor Day weekend, and about the only good thing I can say about it is that the people in my immediate cubicle bank are friends: they’re smart, they make me laugh all day long, we all have each other’s backs when we need help, and we have each other’s ears when one of us needs to let off a little steam. We are all sitting closer to a window that gives us more light, as well as a better view of Park Avenue and 49th Street, and I’ll never say no to more light. On the other hand, LuthorCorp with more light is still LuthorCorp, and I’m still chafing at the bit, still longing to escape, but not in a bridge-burning, finance-ruining way, especially now that I’ve been reminded just how sexy health insurance coverage can be. There is also the small matter of the LSAT, now less than two weeks away. Until Friday evening, the LSAT was merely a looming deadline, a test where the prep this time around has been difficult and stressful, much more so than it was last year, probably because I’m feeling an increased sense of urgency about getting into school. Friday night, alas, brought even more unwelcome news: Because my supervisor is needed to cover the workload of an outgoing new mom, I am needed to cover my supervisor’s work—including a two-week business trip to Philadelphia, right smack in the middle of which is the test date—on which I am scheduled to be at a test center in Manhattan. Fortunately, my supervisor is a friend and a kind woman; she knows all about the LSAT plan and has been both stalwart in her support and impressive in her discretion. She swears that we will find a way to make this work, and she will find a way to keep me in New York for the test, but my already-tenuous concentration and confidence have both been broken, and I’ve been considering an option I had considered untenable until now, namely postponing the test and trying again in December. Add to all this the usual hash of lack of sleep, lack of exercise, lack of deep green leafy vegetables and garden-variety insecurity, shake well and serve on toast points, and you have one weepy, navelgazing, utterly tedious bakerina.
But I’m sure, dear friends, that you did not come here for weepiness, navelgazing or tedium—which is good, because that’s not what I’m here for, either. 
You are here for silly stories about food, and tonight I am more than happy to deliver.
Laurie Colwin once wrote that terrible things can happen in the kitchen to anyone, even experienced cooks, but it’s still cold comfort when it happens to you, especially when that terrible thing is still in your kitchen. These were supposed to be blackcurrant macarons, a variation of the beautiful recipe posted by Jen the Bread Freak at The Barmy Baker, who, in turn, found it at Tartelette. Because I am a mad fool for blackcurrant desserts, I bought as many half-pints of blackcurrants as I could this summer, and turned them all into blackcurrant puree, ready to be turned into something wonderful. I found that wonderful thing in the dream of a blackcurrant macaron, almond-based macarons flavored with blackcurrant puree, sandwiched together with blackcurrant buttercream. It sounded like heaven in a teacup—and, to be honest, still does. In hindsight, I should have remembered that if you replace a solid flavoring (like espresso powder) with a liquid (like fruit puree), you need to either subtract an equivalent amount of another liquid ingredient, or increase the amount of dry ingredients. I did neither of these, and when I ended up with a batter so loose that it poured out of the pastry bag before I could even give it a squeeze, I knew that only trouble could lie ahead. I soldiered on anyway. What I got was certainly edible, essentially 50 little discs of blackcurrant-flavored pavlova, but nothing that I could get off the sheet pan intact, much less sandwich together with buttercream.
Ah, well. I still have some blackcurrant puree left, and I think I know what changes I need to make for a workable recipe. In the meantime, I can appreciate how pretty this stuff looks as you put it together:
Really, I should look this good when I fall short of expectations. 
The good news, dear friends, is that I managed to bake something else today, and had much, much better luck with it. Stay tuned.