strawberry macarons

It’s been awhile since I’ve made these. The day I made them my husband got all excited when I sent him a picture…. he said, “Oooo my favorite.” Funny, I always thought rum balls were his favorite. I’m confused.

With these, I followed my usual recipe and incorporated a strawberry Italian butter cream filling to them. I usually fill them with ganache or regular (American?) butter cream. For the record, the American butter cream is MUCH easier. Typical, huh? Italian butter cream involves heating a sugar syrup to the soft ball stage and tempering it into an egg base in small increments while beating, then you add whipped softened butter and sugar and beat it until it finally is creamy.

Call me lazy…. I loathe tempering eggs.

I’m not even going to bother adding an Italian Buttercream recipe here. I’ll let you Google it if you feel the desire to temper eggs and have sore arms the next day. As far as the macaron recipe goes….

I realize now that I have a lot of macaron posts here, there are:

Key Lime Macarons Cookies n cream macarons

Chocolate macarons

And others as well…

If you’ve never attempted these tasty little French morsels of bliss, I’d suggest reading my tutorial here.

For strawberry macarons, simply incorporate three tablespoons of strawberry jam into 4 oz softened cream cheese mixed with 1/2 cup powdered sugar. That’s my hubby’s favorite filling (so far). Maybe I’ll make rum flavored ones for him next.

But, first he needs to build me a chicken coop.

I’m back on my “I-want-chickens-in-the-backyard” obsession. Blame it on our local fair being in town, and they have these sweet little chicks for $6 a piece. Oh boy. Baby anythings get me in trouble.