Hazelnut macarons

Hooray, all's not lost. At least, partially. While I'm stuck in no-laptop-land now, Daddy has provided a spare laptop for me to use in the meantime while we await the IT show in June (please show, come faster please). The downside is that the laptop is extremely extremely slow. Bangs head on keyboard. Ah, but beggars can't be whiners, so I'll put up with it till June.

Anyway, with the laggy laptop, I've still managed to accomplish some things, like downloading Adobe Photoshop CS5 trial (when did they move on to v5?? The last I heard it was like 3 and I was using 2 all the while. Man am I backdated.) and Picasa. With whatever files I still have in my camera, I've managed to edit some stuff to post so my backlog isn't going to be that bad. (: First up, here's some hazelnut macarons...

Hazelnut macarons with nutella ganache

Hazelnut macaron shells

I replaced half of the almond meal in a simple macarons recipe with hazelnut meal and topped the macaron shells with some more hazelnut meal when the macarons were sitting out to dry. After that, when I began making the chocolate ganache, I realised I had ran out of cream. I was concurrently making a different flavoured macaron (next post!) and I forgot to save some cream for the hazelnut ganache filling. Aargh. So I improvised. I melted some dark chocolate, and instead of adding hot cream, I stirred in a few tablespoons of nutella till I was satisfied with the consistency of the ganache. Ta-dah! Nutella chocolate ganache!

The macaron tops were a bit puffed up, I don't know why, maybe cos of the extra hazelnut meal I sprinkled on top? :( And they were really shiny too. Haha, compared to the other flavour macaron that I made on the same day.

I really liked how the hazelnut flavour popped in this macaron. The nutella was quite apparant in the first bite. And seriously, who could resist nutella? They were even better after resting in the refrigerator for a day. I could totally understand why people say macarons taste better after a day when the flavours are allowed to mingle. They really do (maybe not so much for this since this was predominantly hazelnut based, but more for the other flavour I made). I was quite happy with this flavour in general, and I think the friends who I shared these with also liked them. Yums. Can totally see myself making this flavour again in future. (:

Can't wait to share my next macaron post since I've been harping so much throughout this post haha. It's a really interesting combo that I thought long and hard before attempting it. ;)