Macarons - Daring Bakers

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. who chose "Macarons" from Claudia Fleming’s "The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern" as the challenge recipe. Well, I must say, so far none of the challanges made me so nervous like this one. Macarons. What?! Oh my...I thought when I checked out what the challenge is, yeah macarons. I read it right. I remembered my first attempt some 2 years ago, all macarons cracked, but at least they had a "feet". The second trial almost a year after, nice top, no feet. I thought no way, that this time I can make it. I hardly trusted my eyes when I looked in the oven: I had good looking macarons in there with feet and a whole top! I was almost speechless and extremly happy! Yeah, the 3rd trial and it worked! I called my mom immediately to tell her, because she was there when I failed with my second trial. To celebrate my first macaron success, I decided to prepare Pierre Hermé's passion fruit - chocolate ganache, and I guess it was the best choice I could make!



Ingredients:
80 g butter, room temperature
12 maracujas
30 g acacia honey
460 g milk chocolate
180 g hazelnut, whole


Cut butter in cubes. Half passion fruits and scratch out the seeds and press them through a strainer. Bring the passion fruit juice together with the honey to boil. Melt chocolate over steam and stir in the fruit juice and after the butter. Set aside and let it cool. Fill macarons with the ganache and place one whole roasted hazelnut in the middle of each.