I’ve been on a bit of a macaron hiatus ever since my batch of chocolate macarons a few months ago. I’ve been craving macarons but the fix I really want is to hop on a plane to Paris and hit up Pierre Herme but since that isn’t in the cards right this second (although I’m hoping to make it happen this spring or summer) I decided to make my own batch.
The fun part about making macarons is deciding what flavour to make. I wanted to try something different so I started scanning the interwebs for some inspiration. I landed on The Culinary Chronicles and a recipe for Coconut Macarons with White Chocolate-Mango Ganache. Now coconut is probably my favourite dessert flavour ever. I’m all about coconut errythang. Oddly enough I don’t think I’ve ever had a coconut macaron so I decided to go that route. Although I also enjoy mango-flavoured things I decided to do something a bit more basic and go with a lemon-flavoured filling. My thinking was that I could replicate the flavours in a classic coconut cake with lemon curd but with a twist of white chocolate.
Nothing crazy happened with this batch of macarons. For whatever reason I usually have a pretty smooth time making macarons (with the exception of chocolate). As a result I don’t really sweat the process, I just go for it. This batch was no different and the macarons turned out beautifully, if I do say myself.
The flavours were overall pretty lovely but not as pronounced as I would’ve liked. The coconut in the shells wasn’t quite coconutty enough for me. Next time I’d consider toasting the coconut first and upping the amount of lemon zest and extract in the filling. They were still great but just needed a bit of an extra oomph.
For the recipe visit The Culinary Chronicles. If you want to do the white chocolate-lemon ganache omit the mango extract and substitute about 1 tsp of lemon zest and 1 tsp lemon extract.
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Your macarons look great… and delicious, too. Love your combination of coconut and lemon. Hope you manage to come to Paris soon: come and say hi!