Choco-Caramel Passion Fruit Jelly Macarons

Hello guys, I am finally back to France 2 weeks ago and was really eager to get back to the Mac Tweet Challenge... Bought so many exotic ingredients which I will definitely experiment it on my future macarons.

I am thinking of writing another book of macaron baking... what do you guys think ? I have been doing some brain storming for theme, ideas, flavours, designs etc. My husband is really excited about it as he said he wanna try to work on the filling and the flavour with me. That is great because I love baking macaron shells but is very reluctant to make the filling. Guess making the filling isn't half as exciting as seeing macaron's pretty feet grow.

Let's get back on the track - Mac Tweet challenge this month: Fruit! Yay, I love everything fruity, so I was so happy that I couldn't wait any longer to bake my macs and here I present you :

Choco-Caramel Passion Fruit Jelly Macarons


Inspired by many recipes from Pierre Herme, this recipe contains a jelly square with the chocolate ganache.

For the shell

Ingredients

1. 40g egg white
2. 30g almond powder
3. 50g icing sugar
4. 30g castor sugar
5. 1/2 tsp of purple colouring
6. 1/2 tsp of yellow colouring


Methods:
1. Prepare 2 freezer bag or a smaller piping bags. If using freezer bags, staple up one side, cut the end to make a piping bag. Also put aside a big piping bag with noozle in it.

2. In a blender, mix up the almond powder, food colouring and icing sugar, sieve it and set aside

3.beating till you get a soft peak and then add in the rest of the sugar. Beat to stiff peak.

4. Add the blended dry ingredients to the stiff egg white. Mix them up roughly but do not fold yet. Separate the mixture into 2 bowls, then put yellow colouring in one bowl and purple colouring in the other bowl. Start folding.

5. Keep folding until you get a mixture that flow slowly like lava. This should take about 50 folds. The mixture should be uniformed, shiny and when lifted it should flow down and form a thick ribbon.

5. If you need further illustration on baking dual colours macarons please refer to this post http://macaron-fetish.blogspot.com/2010/02/tri-colours-blueberry-white-chocolate.html

6. Fill each colour in each freezer bag, use a clothes clip to clip off the end so that the batter wouldn't leak while you fill the bag. When both bags are filled, put them into the big piping bag. Adjust accordingly so that 2 bags are more or less on the same level.

7. Put a piece of baking sheet over a baking tray, pipe the mixture.



8. Let the macaron sit until a shell is formed and it's nolonger sticked to the fingers when touched. Depanding on your room temperature, and air humidity this should takes somewhere between 30 minutes to 1 hour.

9. Pre heat the oven on 160 C with only top heating.

10. When the oven is heated up, put in the piped macarons, bake for 8 mins, the feet should already start forming at this stage.

11. Change the heating to bottom only, bake for another 6 minutes. To know if your macarons are baked, you could try it by gently touching the shells, when it's baked it should nolonger slide against the feet.

12. If the macaron shells are not well baked, extend the baking time by 1 minutes and recheck.

12. Let macaron cooled before removing them from the baking sheet.



13. Match up all the similar size shells, and get the ready for filling.






For Passion Fruit Jelly & Choco-Caramel Ganache Filling

Passion Fruit Jelly


Ingredients
1. 3 Passion fruits
2. 1/4 tsp of agar-agar powder
3. 3 tablespoon water

Methods:
1. Over a small pot with a sieve, scrap out the passion fruit pulp and put it straight on the sieve, press the pulp to extract the juice.

2. Add in the water, then the agar agar powder, stir, then bring it to boil over medium heat.

3. Stir constantly and watch closely so it wont BURN!! It's important to remove the pot from heat immediately once the juice starts to boil up.

4. On a glass/metal plat, pour over the mixture. Let cool in room temperature then put in the fridge to let it set.

5. It should take about 30mins to for the jelly to set. Cut it into rectangular stripes. If not use immediately, put it back in the fridge.


Choco-Caramel Ganache

Ingredients:

1. 50g Cooking Caramel Milk Chocolate (I use the new Nestle cooking chocalate in caramel flavour)
2. 40g fresh liquid cream


Method

1. In a small pot, over low heat, warm up liquid cream

2. When the mixture is warm enough, remove from heat. Add in chocolate and stir constantly until a smooth texture is obtained

3. Let sit in room temperature for 30min - 1 hour to cool down.




PUTTING IT TOGETHER:

Fill your one macaron shell with chocolate ganache, put one rectangular jelly on top the, on the other shell, pipe a pea size of choclate ganache on it, this help secure the shell to the jelly. Close it up and viola!

ENJOY :)