Macaron Variations: Chocolate-Mint & Coffee

Hello again, it's your Baking Bore.
I'm still experimenting with macarons variations and they get prettier every time. Next, I'm going to attempt using less sugar. Well, a few days ago I shared my "basic recipe" here. Now it's time for some really, really simple variations. First: chocolate-macarons with chocolate-mint filling:

Everybody likes chocolate, right? For the actual macarons, all I did was add 1 heaped teaspoon and 1 heaped tablespoon of cocoa powder (the dark intense kind, not instant for drinks) to the almonds and icing sugar before mixing them. For the filling, I used an extreme shortcut and melted After Eight after dinner mints in a bain-marie, spread on and let harden. Voilà! You don't even need to refrigerate them as they won't go bad unlike maracons with fillings which contain fresh cream. I calculated about 1 mint per macaron, but you won't need that much. It's not the fanciest of fillings, but super-quick.

The second variation, that has a slightly more interesting and work-intensive filling was coffee. Coffee macarons are a classic and they turned out quite well. 

I added 1.5 sachets of instant coffee (about 3 grammes, I guess). I always hoard those sachets at hotels and it doesn't matter if you use decaf coffee, either. I added a sachet with the almonds and sugar as with the cocoa powder, but then decided it wasn't coffee-ey enough and added another half later. This is why there are specks on the surface, as the second installment wasn't mixed/ground properly. It actually looks quite interesting, but if you want it to look more even, blend with the rest:

For the filling, I used about 100 g of white chocolate and a little (about 50 ml.) of cream. All you do is bring the cream to the boil, melt the contents of another sachet of instant coffee (or about 2 g), then remove from the heat and melt the chocolate. Let cool and spread on the macarons. Keep the filled coffee macarons refrigerated.

My next project will be coconut macarons with a citrusy filling. Stay tuned! Practice really makes perfect and the chocolate macarons I made last were indeed the prettiest ones.