Grasshopper Mint Macarons

chocolate mint macarons

My friend asked me to make macarons for her sister's bridal shower and the colors are green and white. I've been wanting to try and make grasshopper mint macarons for a awhile...had full intentions of making them for St. Patty's Day and drawing little clovers on them but didn't get around to it...so I thought this would be a great opportunity to try it out.  

Using the french macaron recipe I always use (see my other macaron posts), I colored the batter green (using Wilton's moss green gel color). They came out a little lighter than I had hoped, the color per the bridal shower invitation is a bit darker, so I'll have to make note of that for the actual shower macarons.

Once I baked up the cookies I let them cool and then worked on the filling.  I actually had to make another batch because my first batch didn't turn out. I thought I could just add half of the beaten egg whites to the batter first, then add my coloring, and then fold in the rest of the egg whites, so that I could get the color right without over-mixing it.  It ending up just clumping up and not mixing well at all. That was pretty frustrating...live and learn.

For the filling I found a bag of Andes baking bits and made a ganache (using 1 cup of mint chocolate bits and 1/4 heated heavy cream).  I let the ganache cool a bit and put it in a piping bag to make it easy to fill the macarons.

Overall, the macarons turned out pretty good. Just need to work on my technique to get more consistency in making them.