Last year during the holiday season everyone was talking French Macarons. After watching the film Kings of Pastry, I was overwhelmingly inspired to take on the challenge to serve my guests at a holiday dinner party Classic French Macarons—but Indian-style!
If you saw Kings of Pastry you too would be aroused by their mouth-watering utterly majestic and artful hand-crafted sweets and be inspired to take on a feat of your own in the kitchen. These genius pastry chefs pour their hearts and souls into the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France competition putting their lives and loves on hold to win the title of Best Craftsman in France.
That film was enough inspiration to keep me up till midnight slaving over a hot oven in my first attempt at making my Indian-spiced macarons. A complete failure that was!
Last year I wanted to share this recipe with all you blog readers, but was far too embarrassed to allow my stories of trial and error and my final half-baked result of a macaron that I ended up serving my guests reach the Internet. My guests by the way loved them immensely and were highly impressed with the effort!
However, after attending last week’s seminar The Art of Food Blogging by renowned French blogger and author Clotilde Dusoulier hosted by the Stratford Chefs School in conjunction with George Brown College, promoted by Mary Luz Mejia of Sizzling Communications and the Cookbook Store, I realized I was probably in the wrong by not sharing my ‘first attempt’ macaron experience last year! Clotilde is the author of one of the original food blogs out there, Chocolate & Zucchini, which she started in 2003 to share her healthy recipes (the zucchini part) and her baking recipes (the chocolate part) and to channel her obsessive desire to talk about food!
This year Clotilde was chosen as the Joseph Hoare Gastronomic Writer in Residence at the Stratford Chefs School–a program that assists students in food writing. I had the pleasure of hearing Clotilde’s advice on The Art of Food Blogging, where she graciously lent us her top tips on the craft of food blogging and writing.
A software engineer by trade, Clotilde felt she was missing meaningful connections and discussions about food and started to share her pastime of cooking through her blog. Her advice to aspiring writers—focus on great content to draw in an audience that will create value for readers; find your own unique, honest voice so people can relate and trust what you have to say; and to connect with readers and foster relationships with the blogging community.
Clotilde’s highly successful Chocolate and Zucchini is a community of food enthusiasts and writers who converge their thoughts and ideas about food in a constant dialogue and learn from each other through discussion—it is truly a wonderful food blog! If you haven’t already visited the site you should and I hear her Yogurt Cake recipe is killer which I’m planning on making myself!
For now, I haven’t yet decided if I’ll be making Macarons again this holiday season. If you happen to make them, please let me know how they turned out! I’m sharing with you two recipes for Indian-inspired macaron fillings you can try.
Yes, this is the time to start thinking about your holiday baking!
===================================================================================================================================
Chai Spiced Coconut Cream Cheese Macaron filling
Ingredients:
1/8 cup cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp. Arvinda’s Chai Masala
1 tsp. coconut essence
Method: In a bowl, mix ingredients together.
===================================================================================================================================
Garam Masala Chocolate Macaron filling
Ingredients:
2 tbsp. butter, softened
½ cup icing sugar, sifted
4 squares, semi-sweet chocolate, melted
1 tbsp. cocoa
1 tsp. Arvinda’s Garam Masala
½ tsp. vanilla
Method: Mix butter with sugar. Stir in remaining ingredients.
================================================================================================================================
A teaspoon of: Julie Delpy. Listening to: Je t’aime tant.
[…] some Indian spiced sweet ideas you can try: * Chai Spiced Cookies * Holiday Chai Spiced Snowballs * Chai Spiced Coconut Cream Cheese or Garam Masala Chocolate Macarons * Holiday Garam Masala Spiced Cake * Citrus Chai Spiced Sugar […]
Thomas Trevethan Pastry and Confections Las Vegas
Chef Thomas Trevethan Secrete to the French macaroon!!!
It all starts with the filling – butter cream can be traditional, but by far not the best flavor it’s dense and firm enough to stick the two cookie halves, but the result you will get is a French Macaroon that is to sweet to eat.
There are another two options, Pate De Fruit or a thickened fruit jelly, or a cocoa butter based ganache which gets our vote as being the best combination of sweetness from the cookie and acidy from the fruit.
These sound totally yummy! I love unique flavors
Sweet Sarah macarons and more
They sound delicious.
Hi there, Melissa here from Food Bloggers of Canada. Just popping by to check out your blog and let you know we’ve added you to our Membership Directory. Welcome aboard! What a neat take on the Macaron!
Thanks for stopping by Melissa! Excited to be a part of Food Bloggers of Canada! 🙂 Will be perusing the blogs for some Macaron tips!
Bravo for your unique Indian-French macarons! Now get rewarded and over-take the Indian “gourmet ” market with your adapted macarons! There’s a billion mouths to feed 😉
In San Francisco, I saw macarons with ice cream center. And I expect macarons with foie gras very soon, not later than this holiday season actually.
No way about Macarons with ice cream centre–that sounds divine! As for the foie gras, I see where that is coming from…expect the unexpected! Interesting and thank for sharing.