This is a guest post by Isaac from Baken.

Having a bit of a sweet tooth means that I often find myself taking unintended trips down the dessert aisle at my local supermarket. One observation is the increasing number of “healthy” and “wholesome” desserts, but that is not a surprise given our ever increasing health conscious lifestyles. It’s not all gloom and doom for us sugar tooth fairies though!  Luckily, I have noticed one sugar filled product that is becoming more and more common place. The macaron. The internet is littered with recipes, McDonald’s now serve them around the world and even Tesco is selling them at a very reasonable price.

I am all for making food more accessible and offering more choice but having sampled a lot of these I do feel that they are often very one dimensional with an overpowering sweetness. Compared to the more traditional boutique patisseries such as Ladurée and Pierre Hermé, these “mass market” macarons lack the depth and character I want to be able to associate with such a luxury.

That is why I want to share this espresso macaron recipe, the bitterness of the coffee beans balances out the inevitable sweetness of the macaron shells. The espresso infused ganache not only adds yet another layer of complexity to the flavour but also extra texture to help the dark chocolate bond the two halves of the macaron together. Don’t just take my word for it, go see for yourself below!

Let’s get started! For this recipe we will need:

Ingredients
125ml double Cream
200g dark Chocolate (85% cocoa)
20 – 30g freshly ground coffee beans
15ml coffee extract
1g brown food colouring
125g ground almond
200g icing sugar
50g caster sugar
120g egg white
2g cream of tartar (optional) Continue reading “Espresso macarons recipe – a guest post”