Snickerons

After a recent fit of innovation it dawned on me that if you could make pistachio macarons, you probably could use other kinds of nuts, and as peanuts aren't really nuts they should work as well (there's no logic there, just creative thinking). Since it's possible to make peanut macarons (by creative inference), and also chocolate ones, you could take one of each shell and stick caramel cream between them and have something that's kinda like a snickers bar. The natural name for this thing would of course be “snickerons” – hence the title of this post. I sincerely hope we do not offend the French nation by blatantly dragging the crown of French pastry mastering into the cheap filth of American mass consumerism. I mean, that's what we're doing, we're just hoping no one takes offense... :-)

So, the three components needed are peanut and chocolate macaron shells and caramel cream.

Macaron shells
100 g Egg whites
30 g Sugar
100 g Ground Almonds
200 g Confectioner's Sugar
dash of Lemon Juice

Mix the ground almonds and confectioner's sugar in a large bowl. Whip the egg whites and lemon juice to a foam, add the sugar and whip it to a soft meringue. Fold the meringue into the dry mixture without overworking it. Pipe small rounds on a parchment covered baking sheet (use a round tip). Let them sit for at least 30 minutes before baking at 175°C for 7–8 minutes.

Chocolate macaron shells
Substitute 20 g of confectioner's sugar with 20 g powdered cocoa. Add a light touch of green food coloring to get a more chocolaty color to the finished shells.

Peanut macaron shells
Substitute half of the almonds with peanuts. Make sure they're roasted and unsalted. The only ones I could get that matched those criterion were unpeeled Raffles style peanuts (the Long bar at Raffles Hotel is home to the Singapore Sling, and the shells of the complimentary peanuts are supposed to be discarded on the floor – colonially decadent and barbaric, but fun), which makes for some gruesome peeling... the things we do for treats!


Peanut macaron shells fresh out off the oven

Caramel cream
120 g Sugar
1 tsp Lemon Juice
300 g Cream

Melt the sugar and lemon juice in a pan. Add the cream little by little and let it absorb. When all the cream is in the pan, give it a quick boil up and then strain it into something that you can cover up and put in the fridge. Cover up and put into the fridge. :-)

Assembly
Put some caramel cream between two different kinds of shells. Enjoy!


The finished snickerons

It actually worked. They taste somewhat like a snickers bar, only better. I think it needs more peanut though, so I'll try adding some salt in between (to lift the peanut flavor), or add some chopped regular (roasted and salted) peanuts. I guess the salt could have been added to the caramel cream, that would probably have worked out beautiful.

Another thing about following fits of inspiration is that you rarely stop to think things through, which I've had time to do now, and I really don't know why I made two shells... could've just made chocolate flavored peanut shells and caramel cream.

Guess that's the next iteration of this insanity: salt caramel cream and chocolate flavored peanut macaron shells. Or do you need almonds to call it macarons? Never mind – we're calling them snickerons anyway!