Packaged Macarons

Finally...I have filled and paired up the macaron shells that  have been accumulating in my freezer over the past month. Now their flavours can mature over a couple of days before being given away at Grandparents Day. 

(Pink: rose water with white choc ganache centres. Blue: vanilla with dark choc ganache. Choc - with Nutella centres).

It took dozens and dozens to get some good-looking ones : [

I did the chocolate batch today. 

My first attempt at chocolate macarons this weekend was an out-right failure: I'd followed a suggestion to replace a third of the icing sugar with cocoa. Way too much cocoa! It was such a sticky, heavy mixture that it had no chance of rising. Nice chewy chocolate biscuits though!

Still using the macaron recipe I posted before here,  this time I  replaced just 15g of the icing sugar with 15g of cocoa powder - bearing in mind that the cocoa powder I favour is a very dark, rich kind (kapong - mean anything to you?!) that I get from Bake-a-Ton. If you used regular supermarket cocoa, you'd probably have to use more. 

The first tray came out the oven looking good, the second tray were all cracked. All. 

It was probably the temperature - which I'd fiddled with between trays. 

Yikes, these things are fussy!

Anyway, a pretty ribboned box disguises all manner of defects ; )

(These boxes were custom made for me by Cutting Crew in Pietermaritzburg. Email me if you'd like their details.)

xxM