Think about ability to add some flavour to your homemade macarons. It is possible, indeed, and I will show you how in this post! Use this article as your guide to wonderful world of flavoured macarons.

When it is so cold and snowy outside, it might be a good idea to do some baking. Then you can enjoy some nice macarons with a cup of tea or coffee.

To be able to do so, I share with you my recipes, and hope you find them useful. I know that I have been a bit silent in the past few days. This is not because I gave up on my macaron blog. I was just having a small break and finding the right topic to write about. I think over past month I have shared a lot of macaron recipes and most of them were similar.

So I decided to try out something new. First of all I have tried using Italian meringue method, and I will share this recipe with you soon. Secondly, I have discovered the world of “freeze-dried berries and fruit powders” and it is absolutely amazing stuff to use in the bakery!

Usually you would use a colour gel or powder to make your macarons nice and colourful. Which is of course quite lovely, but think about the idea of adding not only colour, but also some nice flavour! Mango, banana, raspberry or passion fruit! Quite cool, I know.

So!.. in this post I will share my experiences with you. When it is freezing outside, use some freeze-dried berry powders inside 🙂

Flavour in macarons ultimate guide from Macarona D

WHERE

I ordered my powders from Souschef on-line shop. They have a lot of interesting ingredients for all kind of cooking purposes. They also sell some edible flowers! So the ones who are looking for some cool stuff to decorate your cake with, it’s maybe worth checking them out.

WHICH

I got the following ones:

• Raspberry
• Passion fruit
• Mango
• Banana
• Strawberry

PRICES

They are a bit more expensive than other colouring options. If compare to colour gels, which are something like £1.30 for 15gr of gel, they are slightly more expensive (something like £1.95 for 15gr of powder). However, they are more healthy and natural than colour gel or powders. Below you can see ingredients of the colouring gel (on the left) and ingredients of the freeze-dried raspberry powder (on the right). Pictures talk for themselves.

OKAY, BUT WHAT TO DO WITH THEM?

Wonderful! You might wonder how to use them in the macarons. It is super easy. Use any of my already exciting recipes, for instance, my recent recipe of red velvet macarons. In stead of adding cocoa powder and colouring gel to the dry ingredients, add 2 teaspoons of the freeze-dried raspberry powder, or any other powder.

You should add your powder to the almond-sugar mix and sieve it. Then mix with whisk the mixture, so that everything is well incorporated.

The result will be amazing! Your macarons will be more interesting and with some extra flavour hidden in the shells. Also a nice bonus is that those shells are 100% natural, with no preservatives or regulators. I must stay that colour will probably not be as strong as if you use artificial colourings, but it’s not a big deal.

Related: top 10 tips on macaron baking

CAN I USE IT AS A FLAVOUR FOR SOMETHING ELSE THAN MACARONS?

SURE! What those powders are also handy for is making fillings for your macarons. Previously I shared with you some fruity mango & blackberry cream cheese recipe and it was quite a tasty one…BUT.. you can also make mango cream with the powder. When you use fresh fruit, like mango or strawberry, the taste can be not very clear. It is certainly not a problem with freeze-dried powder.

I also quite often use those powder to make pancakes, or batter for cupcakes or cakes. The result is really nice. Try it out!

MY EXPERIMENTS

Now, that I spoke about all the advantages of using freeze-dried powder, I want to share with you the results. I made three different types of macarons: passion fruit with strawberry and chocolate, raspberry with mango and fig, and banana with strawberry cream. See below for the details!

Results

1. Passion fruit shell with strawberry and chocolate cream cheese

2. Raspberry shell with mango buttercream and fig jam

3. Banana shell with strawberry cream

Conclusion

Out of 3 macaron types 2 were successful 🤓👆🏻 which is a good result, I think.

Banana macaron failed, because of the meringue stage, as I was a bit in a rush, and with macarons rushing is never a friend. It still tasted good. However, my “testing buddies” did not feel much banana in it somehow. I think I will do this one again to see what should be improved.

For the raspberry ones I used different technique (with paste and boiling sugars, Italian meringue), and I liked the challenge. The best part of the usage of those powders is that your oven smells like berries, and this fruity smell spreads around.

Passion fruit had the strongest taste out of all of above macarons. The colour on the picture is slightly stronger than it was in reality, but generally with all natural colourings it is like that (less strong than artificial).

I also used some of those powders as a decoration element: just sieved a bit on top of macaron shells. Good news is that it did not burn out in the oven, so can be easily used for the deco as well.

To conclude, I really recommend using freeze-dried fruit or berry powders for your macarons. Surprise your relatives with this unique ingredient!

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🗣Did you try it out? Did you like it? Share the sweetness! Tag @macaron_adb on Instagram with the hashtag #macaronadb to show your creations!

Any questions? Contact me via website, Instagram or Facebook. Drop an email contact@macaronadb.com ! Follow my blog with Bloglovin.

Sweet times!

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