Happy Birthday Kate

It was my little sisters 30th Birthday last week so I duly made the cake, it had to be chocolate (I used the bero classic recipe) but I wanted a twist so the icing layer through the middle was blackcurrant as Kate loves purple stuff!  Iced with chocolate and decorated with flowers from the folks garden (all edible) and home make cake bunting, which quite frankly is one of life's essentials!

Coffee Macarons

I recently made these Coffee Macarons for friends and they worked really well and so they should have as I have practiced Macaron making enough times!  The recipe was pretty standard I used one from this beautiful book,  I Love Macarons by Hisako Ogita.  I added some coffee as I was mixing the wet ingredients for a light flavour and colour.

Now it was the filling I was most fond of!  I adore Devine Chocolate, (which you can buy in Oxfam shops along with many other places) so this filling is a ganache made with the milk chocolate and coffee chocolate, the results were great.

 This is what you do....
100ml double/whipping cream brought to the boil in a pan and taken off the heat,  add 100g of chocolate and allow to melt into the cream, mix together on a slow speed until you have a pipe-able consistency.  Pipe onto the macaron half's and sandwich together.