Chocolate Macarons with Peanut Butter Filling
I sandwiched the filling from "buckeyes" in between two chocolate-almond macarons from La Maison Du Chocolat. It's quintessential American candy blended with the dainty French confection. The light, crisp chocolate cookie is the perfect balance for the rich filling.
Ingredients
Chocolate-Almond Macarons from La Maison du Chocolat
Peanut Butter Cream Filling from Ohio
- 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
- 2 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 4 oz bittersweet chocolate for painting on macarons, melted
Instructions
Macarons
- Preheat oven to 350°F and line two or three baking sheets with parchment paper. Set up a pastry bag with a large round tip.
- Sift together the ground almonds, cocoa powder, 2 cups confectioner's sugar in a bowl. Set aside.
- Beat the egg whites in your stand mixer until they are firm peaks, ten slowly add the remaining 1/2 cup sugar. Beat until the whites are stiff peaks. Sprinkle 1/3 of the almond mixture over the whites and gently fold them in with a rubber spatula. Repeat with another 1/3 of the almond mixture and fold in. Add the final 1/3 of almond mixture and fold in. The mixture will be quite thick, but still a little runny. In other words it won't be light and fluffy like you might expect with all that egg white.
- Fill the pastry bag 1/3 full. Pipe the batter out onto the parchment in about 40 small round mounds, about the size of a quarter.
- Bake for 18 minutes. Remove and cool completely on rack, before peeling the cookies from the parchment. These have the texture of a dacquoise and if you bake them too long they will be crisp. One batch came out this way and my family loved it, so you determine which you prefer.
Filling
- While they cool you can mix up your peanut butter filling. In a mixer with the paddle attachment mix the peanut butter, sugar, butter, vanilla and salt.
- Once the macarons are cooled, paint the underside of all of them with the chocolate, using a pastry brush. Allow the chocolate to set. Putting them in the refrigerator for a few minutes will do the trick.
- Place the peanut butter mixture in a pastry bag and pipe onto half of the chocolate painted macarons. Cover the peanut butter with the remaining macarons.
Notes
These chocolate macarons would also be lovely with the outrageous mocha buttercream or chocolate ganache.