Raspberry rose macarons

Yes I know, yet another macaron post? Groan. I promise this is the last one for the time being. I'm a little sick of macarons myself too. ;)

I was thinking of making dual-coloured macs cos I just find that totally adorable. I'm a dork that way. Anyway, I just realised that this post is so going to be very girly pink. You've been warned.

Raspberry rose macarons

Paper flowers

Hell, since it's gonna be a pinky pink post, heck, I'm just gonna go all out and decorate with everything p-i-n-k. I've had these paper flowers in my room for the longest time ever, and the bottle was given to me (personalised with my name! sweet.) by one of my girlfriends aeons ago when we were studying in secondary school. 

Raspberry rose ganache; White macarons

Swirly pink mac shells; Macarons; Alternate coloured shells; Pinki-ness

I made the mac shells using the normal macaron recipe I use from Tartelette, which uses the French method, and you can see how much flatter they look compared to my previous Italian shells. The Italian ones just looks so much nicer. Okay, I should stop complimenting the Italian way, afterall, it's the harder method than the French one. Ha!

Rose red macarons

Due to my inability to pipe shells of similar sizes most of the time, I ended up piping the white shells smaller than their rose red counterparts. For the white shells, I added a little lychee essence to the white batter and folded it quickly through. For the rose pink ones, I added powdered red colouring, thus the rose red colour. I think I overfolded the rose red batter slightly, cos the powdered colouring just wouldn't dissipate evenly, and in the end, I thought that I shouldn't have overfolded cos I left some coloured streaks in the batter and when I started piping them they look so pretty with the slight swirls through them. Darn. Could be cos of the overfolding that's why the batter spread out more when piped, and thus were bigger than their white shells counterparts. Boo.

I did manage to end up with a few smaller rose red shells than the gigantic ones on the rest of the tray, thus I was still able to pair a handful of the white and rose red shells to achieve the dual coloured macarons I was aiming for.

The recipe for the raspberry rose white chocolate ganache I used for the filling is stated below.

Raspberry rose white chocolate ganache (adapted from Edda)
100 g white chocolate, chopped
60 g 35% whipping cream
50 g raspberries
1 tablespoons rose water

Boil cream and pour onto chocolate. Wait a while before stirring the mixture. The mixture should be smooth and shiny.
Add the raspberry pulp and rose water and blend, taking care not to incorporate air.
Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for several hours before using (can also prepare the day before).

The ganache was a wee bit on the wet side, and they made the macarons soggy pretty fast, so I'd advise filling the shells only when you're going to eat them. Edda used 2 tablespoons of rose water, I halved it cos the rose smell of the rose water was really strong on its own. Even then, I felt that the rose flavour was too overpowering as I couldn't really taste the raspberry flavour. If I make the ganache again, I'd probably up the amount of white chocolate to perhaps 120-130g and reduce the rose water to half a tablespoon or so. I wonder if this ratio will make a firmer ganache than the wet one I ended up with. Or what ratios should I use? Any recommendations? My personal preference for ganache is akin to the texture of a normal dark/milk chocolate ganache.