Lavender Macarons for the Bride to Be

This month one of my oldest and dearest friends is getting married and lucky for me, I get to be one of her bridesmaids. As such, I wanted to do something a bit special for her super classy hen party dinner so I decided to make her favourite desert, some macaron favours for all the lovely ladies attending.

I wanted to make something girlie and pretty so I decided that lavender would be the perfect flavour. Turns out that finding food grade dried lavender flowers is a bit tricky and I ended up ordering them on Amazon.co.uk.

From my research online it appeared that lavender and honey was the most common flavour combination and I was happy enough to go along with this but decided not to go with the typical honey buttercream, instead opting for a Chocolate and Vanilla-Bean ganache, a Martha Stewart recipe that includes equal amounts honey and cream (it says double cream but I generally stick to single cream) and half a vanilla pod, combined with dark chocolate.

Never wanting to make things easy for myself I eventually decided to make three different fillings (only two made the final cut). The other two were White Chocolate and Coconut Ganache and Dark Chocolate and Olive Oil Ganache (something that has intrigued me for a while now but unfortunately didn't make the final cut).

So with the flavours decided and the ingredients ready to go, I got cracking on the ganach. For today, however, lets start with the macaron shells.

I stuck with my favourite basic macaron recipe from the cookbook Les Basiques de la Pâtisserie - a very straightforward recipe that doesn't involve any of this 40g egg white nonsense and instead just asks for 3 egg whites - simple! This recipe calls for 125g ground almond, 225g icing sugar, 3 egg whites, a pinch of salt and 25g caster sugar. To this you can then add any flavours or colours you like. For these macarons I added 1 desert spoon (1/2 tbsp) ground dried lavender and a fair amount of purple powdered colouring. I didn't have purple so mixed together 2 perts blue and 1 part red and it turned out perfect, just make sure to sift the colouring into the egg whites at the end of mixing to avoid any lumps and chances of cracking in the oven. I know I'm a bit OTT about the sifting (4 times ground almonds, 1 time icing sugar, mix together with electric mixer and sift again into stiff egg whites in two batches) but it works really well for me and produces good results, so I'm happy to put in the extra work.

I sprinkled the tops of half the macaron shells with dried lavender flowers before leaving them to sit for 30 mins at room temperature. Leaving them to sit creates a skin on top that makes them more shiny and less likely to crack when baking. Finally I popped them in the oven at 150 degrees celsius for 12 mins, turning the tray around half way through.

With these ones I tried a baking technique I had heard of and left the door slightly ajar while they were in the oven to avoid extra moisture. It worked pretty well, particularly with the first batch, although the shells closest to the oven door didn't bake fully.

(The crack in the front macaron is from me handling it too roughly after cooking. Slap on the wrist for me)

White Chocolate Coconut Ganache

This white chocolate coconut ganache goes so well with the lavender macarons you could mash up the macaron shells with the ganache and eat it with a spoon!! (Yes, I thought about it!!).

The recipe is fairly straightforward but also a little confusing to make. Melt the chocolate over a Bain Marie - with white chocolate, don't go for the fancy brands, the cheaper ones melt better.

Once it's completely melted, allow to cool a little before adding the coconut milk and stirring well so it's fully incorporated. Then set it aside until it sets firm at room temperature (not in the fridge).

This is where it got a little confusing for me. I set it aside and went on to make the other two fillings, set them aside with it and moved onto the macaron shells. By the time I had my first batch ready for the oven the other two ganaches were set firm but this one, while being quite thick was still very soft and moved easily around the bowl. I don't really know if I did it right but I decided to add a little more white chocolate to see if it would thicken it up a bit. I then heated it through, as instructed in the recipe and mixed in the desiccated coconut. Again I left it to sit at room temperature to become firm but I had the same results, so in the end I put it in the fridge. That did the job and although it was still a little softer than the other fillings it worked fine and as I say, it tasted amazing!!

Chocolate and Vanilla-Bean Ganache

This filling was my nod to the more traditional flavour combination of lavender and honey. Funnily enough, I didn't actually realise it was a Martha Stewart recipe until I started writing this post. It's a lovely recipe and is made in two parts.

The first part is creating a vanilla-honey cream by combining the fresh cream, honey, vanilla seeds (scraped out of 1/2 a pod) and the pod itself. Bring the mixture to a simmer over a medium heat and cook, stirring just until the honey has dissolved. Then, take it off the heat and set aside to infuse for 20 mins.

After 20 mins return the honey cream to the heat and bring to a simmer. Once it is heated through, pour through a sieve into a bowl with the chopped up dark chocolate. I used leftover Easter Egg for this one and it melted really easily. Mix until the chocolate has completely melted, then add in the butter and mix until fully incorporated and set aside to cool and become firm. This one set really quickly, probably because of the honey.

In Martha's recipe she uses a food processor to combine the cream and the chocolate but I don't think it's necessary and it just causes more of a mess to clean up. I used a whisk and it didn't take long at all.

Olive Oil Ganache

The third filling I made was dark chocolate and olive oil ganache. It's really simple, just melt the chocolate as usual until most, but not all is melted. Take it off the heat and stir to melt the remaining chocolate in the residual heat. This will take the temperature down and help the olive oil to incorporate. Pour in the extra virgin olive oil, mixing as you do, until it is fully combined and leave to set, stirring every 5 mins to stop it from splitting.

This one set kind of oddly. The chocolate on the sides of the bowl set first, then a layer formed on top, which I mixed through a couple of times, and then finally the inside set.

In the end I didn't have enough macarons to use all three fillings so this one went in the freezer and I'll find another use for it another time. I'd say it'd be gorgeous heated up and used as a chocolate sauce over ice cream or a nutty chocolate brownie or something. Mmmmmmmm......

In the end, when it came to the day of the hen, I was sick and couldn't go but the girls and the bride-to-be got their macarons and I had some lovely feedback saying that everyone really enjoyed them and they went down a treat. What more could I ask for?