tiramisu kisses

I decided to make french-style macarons again today, only I had trouble deciding on a flavor. Then I remembered the instant coffee in the cupboard, along with the marcapone cheese I had made a while back (when I was contemplating making canoli for the Nov Daring Bakers challenge- that never happened, mostly because I was in charge of Thanksgiving dinner at our house, and who has time to fry canoli when all that's going on?).

So I made little tiramisu kisses. Coffee meringue cookies, sandwiched with a white chocolate marcapone filling and some chocolate ganache (because honestly, who doesn't like chocolate ganache?). I used a different macaron recipe from the Oct 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge, this time the one that came in my Dec Food&Wine by François Payard. He uses soft ball stage sugar to make the meringue, and I have a soft spot for Italian meringue after working at Sarah's. I omitted the red food coloring and added 2 tsps of instant coffee to the meringue before folding in the almond/sugar mixture.

The cookies turned out well, only some of them kind of exploded in the oven. The rest puffed beautifully and had the distinctive feet. My personal theory is that the cookies on the bottom tray (that kind of exploded) heated up too quickly and thus exploded.

Marscapone filling:

2 oz white chocolate, melted

8 oz (approx) marscapone cheese, softened.

-combine white chocolate with marscapone, mix well.

The assortment of cookies:

One that kind of 'sploded:

Perfect:

The only thing about french macarons is that they remind me of little hamburgers and thus I always have to remind myself that no, actually, they are sweet and fantastic.