Although the shells are beautiful and bring a lot of texture and colour to the table, the flavour of a macaron mostly comes from the filling. You can fill macarons with lots of different things such as:
Buttercreams
Chocolate Ganaches
Jams or jellies
Fruit curd
There is no one best filling for macarons. We mostly use buttercream and chocolate ganache recipes. Some have a combination of ganache and a fruit jelly centre. Here are a few few examples of how we fill our macarons:
Chocolate Ganache
Lots or our macarons are filled with ganache, they are versatile and can be flavoured with the addition of one or two ingredients. For example our Pistachio Macaron recipe is based on a white chocolate ganache with pistachio paste mixed in. Our Passionfruit Macarons are filled with a milk chocolate ganache that is flavoured with passionfruit puree. And our Dark Chocolate & Cherry Macarons are filled with a simple dark chocolate ganache around the outside that acts as a wall, with a soft cherry jelly centre.
A ganache is made by heating cream, then pouring it over chocolate and stirring them together. The heat of the cream will slowly melt the chocolate, producing a smooth and glossy texture. As your ganache cools it will set. Depending on the ratio of cream to chocolate you put in your ganache will depend how much it will set, for a softer texture, you’ll want more cream and for a firmer set you’ll want more chocolate. Find a recipe that suits what you are making.
Buttercream
Buttercreams are easy to make and can carry delicious, subtle flavours that would have been overpowered by chocolate. We use buttercreams a lot and flavour them with ingredients such as rose water, lemon essential oil or freeze dried raspberry powder.
You make a buttercream by mixing softened (but not melted) butter with icing sugar (go slowly to begin with or cover your mixer to avoid making an icing sugar dust cloud). You whisk these two ingredients together well and add your flavouring. You can keep whisking, adding lots of air to make a light, fluffier buttercream.