I headed out to the little town of Benalla yesterday and visited the local fruit grocer. They had beautiful strawberries for only $2 a punnet and I knew right then that I would love to make some strawberry macarons with them.
I made plain macaron shells and painted them with red and gold lustre dust mixed with vodka. The colors don’t show up very well unfortunately. I filled them with a white chocolate strawberry ganache and a small basil leaf. The basil really cuts through the sweetness making this macaron a very satisfactory mouthful.
Filling recipe as below (fills a 100g almond meal shell recipe)
50g white chocolate
50g strawberries, roughly chopped
1 tsp powdered gelatine
- Heat white chocolate and cream together in microwave in 30 second bursts, stirring between each heating until chocolate is fully dissolved.
- Add chopped strawberries into ganache and incorporate.
- Sprinkle 1 tsp of powdered gelatine into 2 tablespoons of cold water and heat in the microwave for about 20 seconds or until gelatine dissolves.
- Pour ganache mixture into gelatine while stirring to avoid gelatine clumps.
- Leave in fridge to cool and thicken.
I’m always looking for new and interesting flavors to try out when it comes to macarons. Sure, I do enjoy the traditional flavors but I can buy those easily. If one is going to make something at home one should experiment, right?
I had some leftover creamed corn from my previous corn egg drop soup venture and decided to give corn macarons a try. Growing up in Malaysia, I really enjoyed eating corn ice cream and I wanted to emulate that flavor in a macaron.
It really wasn’t that hard and I am absolutely thrilled with the results!
Recipe for sweet corn filling below. Shells can be made according to your favourite macaron recipe and colored orange. I topped mine with a corn flake.
2 egg yolks
50g creamed corn
salt to taste
Over a bain marie, whisk egg yolks, sugar and cream together until mixture becomes thick (custard like consistency).
I have been wanting to try out green tea recipes for years but have never been diligent enough to put in the effort to seek out matcha powder. Finally managed to track some down less than a kilometre from my home. Clearly I did not try hard at all.
Decided to make a green tea mousse cake because I’m trying to practice making multi component desserts now that I have so much time. I have discovered that I have major problems cutting my cakes at 90 degree angles for a perfect vertical line – I tend to skew a little. will have to work on it. Here are the results!
Green tea mousse cake with a macaron on top, peach semi-circles and a sugared puff pastry cigarette.
Recipe from here.
I have made macarons on and off over the past couple of years and have always had limited success with them. They were never really exactly right. This batch was probably one of the best that I have ever made and I even went through the trouble of decorating them:
Salted caramel macarons with a milk chocolate insert. The dots were just painted on with a mixture of vodka and gel food coloring. They turned out extremely well taste wise – there is something incredibly delicious about the salty sweetness of the filling.