Ube Macarons

During a Christmas gift exchange, I was gifted Thomas Keller, Bouchon Bakery. I had this on my wish list for such a long time I squealed when I opened the gift. I LOVE the texture of macarons from Bouchon Bakery and was so excited to try his recipe.   The macarons are made using the Italian method, heating up the sugar and water to a certain temperature before adding it to the whipped egg whites.  As I was reading the instructions, I was thinking, crap, this is a lot of steps, can I do this?  Maybe..?  Yes?  Do it!

I decided if I was going to make macarons the Italian method, I would go full force and make ube macarons.

I went to a local Filipino store and bought my ingredients which included powdered ube. I wanted to take pictures show you step by step how I made these macarons, but ain’t nobody got time for that! Just kidding, there is a great tutorial by Annie’s Eats using the same recipe. Why reinvent the wheel? Annie’s tutorial is excellent! I only made one alteration by adding a tablespoon of ube powder to the powdered sugar and almond flour.

Some notes: Buy a good candy thermometer, the one I had sucked, the top went flying off and I guesstimated when the sugar water got to 248 degrees when the thermometer still read 200. That thermometer is now in the trash.

Once the batter was all mixed, the texture was very marshmallow-y. This may be because I did not heat the sugar water to the correct temperature, or maybe I should have mixed it longer?

I piped the batter and it looked okay, but I had a feeling that something was not right. I shrugged it off and piped some rounds and some hearts.

For the rounds I added heart sprinkles.

I placed the first batch, which were the piped hearts in the oven.

Broken.  Son of a *@&@)!

I lowered the temperature. I placed the second batch of round macarons in the oven.

Better.  I did not throw the broken cookies away, they were still really good! 

These are some of the pretty ones.  See the purple goodness poking out?  That's ube filling!  The filling consisted of frozen ube, conconut and condensed milk. 

OMGTHISISSOGOOD!!!

I used a recipe I found here. << How awesome is that Ube Ombre Cake?! 

The filling is heavy and will make the cookie soften if you keept it in the fridge for a long period of time.  If you are going to use this filling, I suggest you fill and serve the cookies within a day.

Happy Baking!