Maple Walnut Macarons

Are people sick of my macarons? Maybe. But I am most certainly not! Decided that I’d make some maple walnut macarons to celebrate autumn here in Australia.

 

I was particularly pleased with the results of these macarons mainly because of the coloring – I sprayed it with some orange food spray that resulted in an ombre effect. Loved it!

Recipe for filling as follows:

50g butter
30ml maple syrup
20g chopped walnuts

1. Cream butter and maple syrup together until well combined and light in colour. Add chopped walnuts and pipe into macaron shells.

Apple Cinnamon Macarons

I headed out to Country Victoria for a couple of days over the ANZAC Day holiday. Bright was lovely as usual – bathed with its beautiful autumn leaves. I decided to bring some home as well as some wild apples that were growing on some of the trees. Kudos to my friend who went down to the riverbank to retrieve the biggest and prettiest one.

I decided to make some apple cinnamon macarons to match the palette. Recipe for filling below:

1 small apple, skinned and cubed (I chose Pink lady, you can choose whichever)
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp water

Pot all ingredients in a pot and leave to stew for about 10-15 minutes or until soft. Puree in blender and use to fill macarons.

Kaya Macarons

One of my favourite childhood sandwich spreads was kaya – a spread very similar in flavour to salted caramel, except coconut-y in flavour. I decided to make some kaya macarons because I had some coconut cream available.

I made these with the French method with the oven just a bit too hot – the tops browned a little. Other than that though everything turned out the way I wanted it to. I decorated the shells with some dessicated coconut.

You can get the kaya recipe here. For the kaya buttercream, recipe is below:

50g butter, softened
50g kaya

Cream butter and add kaya until incorporated. Pipe into macaron shells.

Coffee Macarons

I decided to try to make some coffee macarons as the flavour of the week. Where does one acquire coffee beans? I wasn’t up for buying an entire bag of beans just so I could use a few so my options were limited – beg, borrow or steal. I requested for some from a barista at a cafe that I had brunch at and he was nice enough to give me some. I was very pleased.

I made these with the French method and to be honest I think I’m just better off using the Italian method from now on – the shells were slightly uneven and the texture was a little cake-y. They tasted delicious though – rich coffee buttercream with a very intense burst of coffee from the bean.

Recipe for super easy buttercream below:

50g butter
20g caster sugar
half a pack of instant coffee

1. Cream all ingredients together and pipe into shells.

 

Chocolate Chestnut Macarons

Chestnuts has been one of my favourite foods ever since I was a child. I still remember my father peeling them for me because I wasn’t very good at it – still not particularly skilled at it to be honest. Anyway, I decided to make some chocolate chestnut macarons to keep myself amused and I was fairly happy with the results, but they weren’t my best work.

This is my relationship with macarons – I know the many steps I have to take to ensure that I get a good shell. Then I try to simplify the recipe in the hopes that somehow it’ll all be okay and it will still work out. This particular batch had very small feet – probably because I didn’t age my egg whites and may not have been overly precise when I was measuring my ingredients. Oh well – lesson learnt – for the umpteenth time!!

I dipped the shells in some dark chocolate – I’ve always wanted to try it and I have to say it worked out fairly well.

Recipe for filling as folllows:

50g butter, softened
50g caster sugar
100g chestnut puree

1. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Incorporate chestnut puree.
2. Pipe onto shells.

French Earl Grey Macarons with Passionfruit Filling

The list of macaron flavours that I want to try out is a page long. It struck me that I could do a few flavour combinations and that way get through the list quicker. So here you have it – macaron shells flavoured with French Earl Grey tea (my favourite tea in the world) with passionfruit filling.

I had an extremely difficult time with my passionfruit filling. In my effort to use up the leftover yolks from the macaron shells I decided to make a custard-like filling and unfortunately, it didn’t set as hard as I would have liked it to. Ended up having to add some gelatine in it which fixed up the problem but it was a frustrating 2 hours.

Anyway, I was very pleased with the results. Me and my housemate ate these sprinkled with our choice of salt (yes, we have a range of salts at home now). Without it these macarons taste well… sugary and not much else. The salt really brings out the subtle flavours of each ingredient.

Next flavour? I’m thinking salted chocolate macarons with a coffee butterream. Yes, I am going through a salt phase now.