We love Moccona coffee and so I decided to make some macarons with it. I made some simple variations to my basic macaron recipe:

Macaron shells
150 g almond meal
140 g icing sugar
58 g egg whites (about 1.5 egg)
1 g meringue powder
150 g caster sugar
38 g water
2-3 drops of each of brown and yellow coloring gels
58 g egg whites extra

I substituted 10 g of icing sugar with 10g of Moccona coffee granules and sifted it in with the almond meal mix.

Put the first lot of egg whites into your stand mixer.
Into a milk saucepan, put the caster sugar and water and dissolve the sugar over a low heat, stirring gently. Use a clean pastry brush to brush down the side of the saucepan to avoid any crystallization. Clip the sugar thermometer according to manufacturer’s instructions. Increase the heat and bring to the boil.
To make coffee-coloured shells, I added brown and yellow gel colourings to my Italian meringue. The amount depends on the strength of your gel, what depth of colour you desire and how it mixes with other ingredients. Practice is the only way to test it out. I scrapped 2-3 tiny balls out using a tooth pick.

Cook the sugar syrup until it reaches 70°C. You should monitor your sugar thermometer, and as it reaches this temperature, add the meringue powder to the egg whites and whisk in medium until it becomes frothy.

Once the sugar syrup has reached 118°C (soft ball stage), take the saucepan off the heat, decrease the mixer speed to medium and slowly trickle the sugar syrup in, down the side of the bowl. (Be warned not to get the syrup onto the whisk as you will then have spun sugar.) Increase speed to high and whisk until the bowl is warm to touch, about 8 minutes.

Add the extra egg white to the almond meal mix, then add the meringue and use a large spatula to thoroughly combine it. Continue folding the mixture to soften the meringue. To achieve “macaronnage”, I mixed the batter about 18 times.

Perhaps it was the drier weather today, I only had to wait 20 minutes and a nice skin had already formed. I decorated some shells with cocoa nibs.

I fan-baked them at 125°C, for 18 minutes. As I have 3 sheets in total, I decided to bake the first in by itself, and then the last two together to see if that changes the results. The macarons in the trays that were baked together were a little bit stickier than the single-sheet-baked ones. In fact, the tray closet to the bottom of the oven was profoundly so, and needed one more minute in the oven for a drier bottom. I think I will stick with baking them individually next time.

Once out of the oven, the macarons were left for 2 minutes on its trays before I checked them. They peeled off the baking paper quite easily. I then slid the whole sheet off the baking sheet onto my cool marble counter top. This causes a thermal shock and will make it even easier to peel off.

I paired this with a chocolate coffee ganache, and the recipe follows:

150g chocolate, chopped
150ml cream
2-3 tbsp Moccona coffee

Melt cream in a pot and pour over the chopped chocolate and coffee granules. Let it sit for 2 minutes until the chocolate melts. Mix till the ganache is smooth. Cool in the fridge for 30 minutes until firm for piping.

These need to be kept in the fridge for 24 hours for the ganache to flavour the shells, so don’t eat it yet! These can keep in the freezer for up to 3 months – just wrap a few of them (4 or 6) with cling film wraps and place them in a airtight box. Bring them out an hour before serving to allow them to return to room temperature. The moisture will cling to the cling film and not your macarons.

The taste reminds me of Tiramisu! Enjoy!