Chocolate Peanut Butter Macarons

I am "catering" a tea party in a couple of weeks and decided that I would need to make macarons for it. I mean... if there is a place for macarons, it is a tea party. Since they can be pretty finicky, I knew I would need to practice beforehand and Easter seemed like the perfect opportunity.

I went to my go-to for desserts, Annie's Eats, and decided to combine a couple of her macaron recipes- chocolate macarons and chocolate peanut butter. Really, I could have made just the chocolate peanut butter, but I didn't have peanuts to use in the cookie. These were delicious and looked quite fancy, if I do say so myself :)

Annie recommends measuring ingredients, so I followed those directions and everything worked out perfectly, so I would recommend doing the same. The ingredients below are all listed by weight, where applicable.


Chocolate Macarons with Chocolate Peanut Butter Filling
via Annie's Eats

Ingredients:
For the macarons:
110 gm blanched slivered almonds
200 gm minus 2 tbsp. confectioners’ sugar
2 tbsp. cocoa powder (Dutch-process preferred)
100 gm egg whites (from about 3 eggs), aged at room temperature for 12-24 hours
50 gm granulated sugar

For the filling:
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
¾  cup heavy cream
1 tbsp. butter
½ cup creamy peanut butter

Pulse the almonds in the bowl of a food processor until finely ground.  Add the confectioners' sugar and cocoa powder to the bowl and process until blended.  In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the egg whites on medium-high speed until foamy.  Gradually add the granulated sugar and continue beating until a smooth, shiny meringue with stiff peaks forms.  Add the ground almond mixture to the bowl with the meringue and quickly but gently fold together using a wide rubber spatula until no streaks remain.  You want to achieve a thick batter that ribbons or flows from the spatula when lifted.

Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.  Transfer the batter to a piping bag fitted with a plain wide round tip.  Pipe into small rounds on the prepared baking sheets (each round should be about 1-1½ inches in diameter), spaced about 1 inch apart.  Let sit at room temperature for about an hour to develop a hard shell.

Preheat the oven to 300˚F.  Bake for 8-10 minutes, depending on size.  Transfer the pans to a wire cooling rack and let cool completely before moving the cookies.

While the cookies are cooling, make the ganache.  Place the chopped chocolate in a small heatproof bowl.  Combine the cream and butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat.   Bring the cream mixture to a simmer, remove from the heat and pour over the chocolate.  Let stand 2 minutes, then whisk gently in small circular motions until a smooth ganache forms.  Let the mixture cool until it is thick enough to pipe.  (I found that even refrigerating and freezing for a decent amount of time, the ganache was still way too runny. I melted more chocolate and added peanut butter to it and then mixed that into the ganache. It thickened up quickly and I was able to pipe it then.)

Once the cookies are totally cooled, match them up by size.  Pipe a thin layer of ganache onto the flat side of one cookie of each pair.  With the peanut butter in a separate pastry bag, pipe a small dollop of peanut butter in the center of each layer of ganache.   Sandwich together with the remaining cookie, pushing the ganache to the edges.  Store in an airtight container.

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Okay, so now that we have that out of the way, can I show you a picture that had me crying while I was piping the ganache/filling. With my addition above, my filling was a little thicker than typical ganache and OMG PEOPLE it looked like cat turds on the macarons. I WAS DYING. Tastes delicious though!

Mmmmm cat turds.