I wanted to introduce a secondary crunchy element to my macarons and was toying with the idea when I came across some Cadbury Berry Forrest chocolate. It had jelly and biscuit pieces in the block – perfect!

As mentioned in an earlier post I love adding freeze dried powders to macarons. I added plum powder to these for a change.

Macarons shell ingredients
150 g icing sugar
150 g almond meal
110 g egg whites, split into 2 bowls of 55g each
150 g caster sugar
38 ml water
1 g meringue powder
a few drops of violet gel colouring

Follow my basic recipe to make the shells.

I paired these with a Cadbury Berry Forrest chocolate ganache.

Filling Ingredients:
150g Cadbury Berry Forrest chocolate
120ml full cream

Instructions:
Break up chocolate into small chunks. Bring cream up to a boil in a pan, and pour over the chocolate. Let it sit for a minute before stirring. Let it cool and thicken in the fridge. Spread or pipe a teaspoon of ganache on half of your shells and top them with the remaining half of your shells.

Dust with freeze dried plum powder.

The filled macarons need to be kept in the fridge for 24 hours for the filling to flavour the shells. These freeze well (up to 3 months).

Look at my little stylist!