Monday Macaron Madness

Do you know what a good activity at 9.30 pm on a Monday evening is? We do: it's making macarons for the first time! Crazy? Guess it fits us then... :-)

We figured we'd start off easy and try a plain almond macaron with dark chocolate ganache for filling. So, we need a chocolate ganache and some macarons! Here's how we made them:

Chocolate ganache
125 g Cream
100 g Dark chocolate (70%)
20 g Honey
1 tbsp Havana Club Añejo Especial (Cuban rum)

Chop the chocolate finely (go ahead, be as masochistic as me and do it by hand, or use a mixer). Add the rum to the chocolate. Mix the cream and the honey in a pot and bring it to a near-boil experience. Pour the cream mixture over the chocolate and fold it together. Let it stabilize in the fridge.

Macarons
We basically ripped one of Tartelette's excellent recipes. Although it originally called for pistachios we just substituted them for even more almonds.

90 g Egg Whites (about 3)
30 g Sugar
200 g Confectioner's Sugar
110 g Almonds

Mix the confectioner's sugar and almonds to a fine powder. Whisk the egg whites and add the sugar gradually until a meringue is formed. Fold in the almond/sugar powder until the whole batter has a “magma-like” consistency. Use a pastry bag with a plain tip to pipe 2 cm rounds on a parchment covered baking sheet (or two in our case). Let them sit and harden for 30–60 minutes before baking them in 130°C for 20 minutes (or longer if you made them bigger). Actually, make it longer and make them bigger, that's what Tartelette (a.k.a. The Macaron Queen of the Blogosphere) does... Let them cool before assembly. Supposedly, they survive well in the freezer, and two baking sheets of macarons is quite alot if you're not having guests over. We'll have to get back to you about that though, we're definetly shoving some of them in the freezer before assembly.

Assembly
Just put them back-to-back with some filling in between! Oh, and enjoy with a glass of milk – it goes great with the sweet and chocolaty macarons!


Mmm, this looks yummy...


...let's move in for a closer look!

Also, having made macarons we feel that there should be some sort of rite of passage into a new stage of our blogospheric career, so if anyone knows of a graphic or something to proclaim that we are “amateur food bloggers with macaron capabilities,” please comment!