Elaine: French Macaroons

So I decided to make the Chocolate Macaroons because I realized that the pistachio and most of the other macaroon recipes had ingredients that wouldn't be kosher for passover. For example, anything with corn is a no-no. No corn syrup, no cornstarch. And if no cornstarch then no icing/powdered sugar. I ran all over the place looking for blanched almonds but could only find slivered blanched. I decided to just use almond meal/flour which is just finely ground blanched almonds. I know all of you already know that but I don't know why I ran around town when I had almond flour sitting in my pantry.

So I forgot a major ingredient....the vanilla extract. Big Oops! I didn't care because I just wanted to get to the piping. Since I didn't have tips large enough, I skipped adding the tip to the plastic coupler and just used the coupler as my circular tip. They came out teeny tiny but super cute that way. I ended up with 48 cookies. I wet the tip of my finger with water so I could push down the peaks in the middle after I finished piping. Before I sandwiched the little morsels together with ganache, I paired the macaroons up to eachother so they were beside their perfect sized partner in crime. Once I organized my macaroons by size and shape, I began to sandwich. I tried to sneak in a couple drops of vanilla into the ganache filling since the cookie was lacking some. Then I ran out of ganache filling so I filled the rest with raspberry jam which I personally like better. I'm more of a fruit gal than a chocolate gal.

All in all, I'd make this recipe again. Super fast, easy and fancy looking. I'm definitely just going to use almond flour next time. And if I have some extra vanilla buttercream in the freezer next time, I'd love to flavor some with raspberry jam and color with the faintest shade of pink. I love brown and pink together. Don't you think a mini dollop of pink raspberry buttercream would look and taste so gorgeous between two chocolate brown pillows? Happy Passover/Easter and happy cooking too.