Holiday celebrations are a little different this year. Perhaps spending the weekend with close family instead of big backyard bashes. Even though it’s just the two of us grilling at home in order to continue to social distance, it doesn’t mean we can’t get some patriotic desserts on the table. I thought what better and delicious way than making a batch of red, white, and blue macarons for the perfect memorial day desserts.
Making These Macarons
Over the last few months I’ve made many batches on macarons, some very much fails but I’ve begun to get used to the things it takes for me to get a good batch. The recipe I use is from indulgewithmimi.com. I like that her recipe is for a smaller batch which is great when you’re using more then one color and if your doing some testing and don’t want to end up with more then a baking sheet of failed macarons. She has countless vidoes and tricks for making french macarons that I have found really helpful. She also has a great trouble shooting guide.
When I make macarons I do use these silicone mats. I was able to make one batch all red and then I made a batch with no food coloring. After I was just about done with my macaronage (combining the wet and dry ingredients) I put about a third in a bowl and added some blue food coloring creating three piping bags of my red white and blue. To get my blue with white stars, I piped my blue macarons first then used my white batter with a very fine tip to carefully pipe my stars. If you have white star sprinkles that would work great as well.
Flavors
I decided to keep it pretty simple on my macaron flavors. I did not flavor any of the actual cookie portion and only the fillings. The white macarons I filled with a birthday cake buttercream. To do this I make a smaller batch of buttercream frosting and then add about a quarter of a cup of storebought boxed funfetti cake mix to the frosting. This may make the frosting thick and require more liquid to thin it out. The blue is a chocolate ganache, microwaving chocolate chips in heavy cream until melted. I then cooled the ganache in the fridge few a minutes at a time until it was thick enough to pipe onto the macarons.
The red macarons I decided to be what I’m calling chocolate covered strawberries. I find using plain jam in a macaron, especially if stored in a row the jam can leak out and be a bit messy. To help counter this I like to put a border a thicker filling to help keep the jam in. You could use buttercream but since I had leftover ganache I decided to pipe the border with that and then pipe in the strawberry jam in the middle.
I hope you have a wonderful memorial day making some sweet patriotic desserts of your own.