Cherry and White Chocolate Macarons
Macarons
Happy Valentine’s Day! To celebrate this year, I made maraschino cherry flavoured macarons with an white chocolate ganache filling. They paired perfectly with this cocktail, a variation of a mimosa, made with cherry juice instead of orange and rosé instead of champagne with a touch of simple syrup.
Full disclosure, I’m not crazy about macarons (I’m more of a gingerbread kinda girl), but I do love making them.
I guess it’s because they are so hard to learn how to, so many techniques and tricks, so many failed attempts, that I just take pride in the accomplishment of nailing the bake.
There’s always that moment of doubt, will they come out ok? Or they’ll end up in the trash? Such an exciting adventure every time.
Well, this time they came out finger licking great. Crunchy and chewy and really delicious. The maraschino cherry flavour paired really well with the white chocolate.
For the decoration, I just melted a little bit of white chocolate in a ziplock bag and drizzled all over the cookies.
Notes:
A few notes about the ingredients: is best if you use almond flour, instead of almond meal. In Australia is hard to find the flour, Woolworths sells the meal only, which is coarser. You do have to pulverize it further in a food processor or blender, otherwise the cookie will come out grainy. If you can’t find any, you can always make it from scratch using peeled almonds.
For the cherry extract, I just used the juice for a glass of maraschino cherries that I got from Dan Murphy’s, no need to purchase cherry extract.
If you can’t find/don’t wanna buy cream of tartar, you can substitute it for white vinegar or lime juice.
And, finally, if you can’t find the chocolate melts, you can use chocolate chips or a bar of chocolate, all you have to do is cut them in small pieces before melting them.
Cherry and White Chocolate Macarons
Ingredients
Cookie
- 1 cup icing sugar 125g
- ½ cup almond meal 60g
- 2 large egg whites (room temp)
- 1 pinch cream of tartar
- ¼ cup granulated sugar 50g
- 1 tsp cherry extract
- 1 pinch salt
- red gel food dye
Filling
- 225 g white chocolate melts
- 100 ml thickened cream
Instructions
Preparation
- Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, place a template beneath
- Prepare a piping bag with a large round tip
Filing
- Make the filling first, it needs to chill
- Place chocolate buttons on a heat resistant bowl. Heat the cream on microwave or stove top until hot (not boiling), pour over the chocolate and mix together with a spatula until all combined and glossy. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until needed.
Cookie
- Blast almond meal with a food processor or blender until you get a very fine grain (if using almond flour, skip this step)
- Swift the almond meal two or three times and discard the rough bits
- Whip the eggs with cream of tartar until starts to foam
- Continue to whip the egg whites until glossy stiff peaks form
- Add flavour and food colouring and mix
- Fold in the powdered sugar, almond flour and a pinch of salt
- Transfer batter to the piping bag, pipe the cookies onto the baking sheet
- Allow cookies to dry out at room temperature for about 1 hour
- Bake in middle rack in a preheated oven at 150°C for 10-12 minutes
- Allow to cool completely before assembling
Assembly
- Remove filling from fridge, it should be thick and able to hold its shape
- Beat it with a hand held mixer until light, fluffy and pale in color
- Transfer to a piping bag, sandwich it between two cookies
- Store macarons in the fridge in an airtight container
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