Honey “Butttercream” filled Macarons

I wasn’t going to bake over the weekend, but I was going to visit one friend and another to visit me ... so I thought I could justify it as I had eaters (as opposed to me eating entire recipes of delicious things!). I’d raved to one friend about Tartlette’s Honey Macarons http://tartelette.blogspot.com/2006/10/tough-relationship-mignardises-and-me.html before and she’s been dying to try them. I had some egg whites in the freezer needing to be used up ... and it was cold outside (I can justify anything sweet!!).

Although the recipe Tartlette used meant I could start with whole eggs and use the yolks in the buttercream, the whites in the macarons, I decided to cheat a bit (and I would lose some of my justification if I wasn’t using up leftovers!). I stuck to her recipe for the macarons but for the Honey Buttercream I did a cheat version.

Beating up the egg whites with sugar syrup for macarons.

My piping skills need some work; luckily this recipe is so forgiving!

Interesting colour differences ... the first lot were baked at the top of the oven, the next lot sat just an inch further down under the other tray. Obviously the white looks better – but I couldn’t taste a difference.

Honey “Buttercream” - cheats version

120 g butter softened
4 tblspns honey
4 tblspns icing sugar (confectioners sugar)

Mix together ... voila ... “buttercream” without the hassle of creating a sugar syrup.

Probably wouldn’t stand up to an application that didn’t involve it being squished between biscuits (cookies!), but very tasty. You could increase/decrease the amount of honey to taste – depending on how strong the flavour of your honey is.

I did give most of them away ... of course I had a couple of tastes - the tops had cracked so I couldn't give THOSE ones away!! Mmmmmmm!!!