Macaron and cake pop factory

No, I don't actually have a macaron or cake pop factory, I wish I did because it would sure come in handy!  Here are some things that I have worked on this month.

Chocolate red and yellow cake pops with white sprinkles for my brother's baby shower.  My nephew Ethan was born on May 4th!

Red Macarons filled with raspberry filling.  This was also for the baby shower.  This is the red that I have been trying to achieve.  I used a LOT of red powder food coloring to get it to this color.  I notice that if you let the macarons sit in the freezer for a day, it enhances the color.
 

My favorite color is purple!  I made purple macarons filled with chocolate ganache and the popular salted caramel macaron for a quincenera.  The color theme of the quincenera was purple.  I hope everyone enjoyed these!

 These macarons look big, but but they're about one inch rounds, which is a perfect bite sized treat!

Macaron Day

Did you know March 20 is Macaron Day? I didn’t either until I read about it on MACTWEETS. I’ve been following MACTWEETS blog for a while now. Jamie and Deeba have monthly challenges highlighting macarons. This month's challenge is, MacAttack #27 Macaron Day Macarons.

In honor of Macaron Day, and my first entry in the MACTWEET challenge, I’m showing you my version of the Salted Caramel Macaron.

I’ve been to a few different macaron bakeries and I always check to see if they have salted caramel macarons. They are my favorite because I love the combination of salty and sweet and I want to find a perfect one to try and recreate. 

A friend had macarons all the way from the Ladurée in Paris sent to her and she was kind of enough to share. My favorite salted caramel macaron comes from this bakery, and salted caramel macarons from lette coming in a very close second.

Making my own salted caramel intimidates the hell out of me, and I didn’t have a candy thermometer yet so for my first attempt, I went the Sandra Lee route and did a semi-homemade salted caramel filling.



Have you tried the Salted Caramel Sauce from Trader Joe’s? If you have not, you must. It’s delicious. During the holidays I finished a whole jar in a few days, by myself. Don’t judge me.



For the macaron cookie I followed the recipe from Jill’s Mad about Macarons cookbook adding a bit of brown gel coloring to the mix.

The TJ’s salted caramel sauce is a bit runny for the macaron. I don’t enjoy eating a macaron and having the filling spilling out. I tried to thicken it using cornstarch and cream, a technique I found here, but I may have done it incorrectly because the consistency was not where I wanted it to be. 

I decided to mix the TJ salted caramel sauce with Swiss Meringue Buttercream.

Once the buttercream is nicely whipped, I slowly added the salted caramel sauce. I didn’t measure how much I added, I just kept adding more and beat it in my mixer until I got the flavor and consistency I liked. Make sure the caramel is at room temperature. 




The cookies came out great and they were part of the dessert table for my boyfriend's birthday.

Don't forget to have a macaron for Macaron Day!