Lavender Macarons with Honey Buttercream

Ingredients

Macarons

1 cup confectioners sugar
1 tbsp dried lavender buds
Purple food colouring
3/4 cup almond meal
2 egg whites
3 tbsp sugar

Honey buttercream

1/2 cup butter
1 cup confectioner's sugar
2 tbsp honey

Method

Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius. Line two sheets with baking paper.

Blend confectioners sugar, lavender and almond meal in a food processor until fine, then whisk everything into a large bowl.

In the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment affixed, add the egg whites and sugar. Turn the mixer on to power level 4 and whisk the mixture together for 3 minutes.

Next, turn the power up to 7 and whisk an additional 3 minutes. Turn the power up to 8 and whisk an additional minute or two. There should be a stiff meringue in the bowl. Feel free to mix in food colouring at this point and whisk at 8 speed for an additional minute to incorportae the color.

Knock the meringue that’s trapped in the whisk back into the bowl. Now, add the almond meal mixture into the bowl all at once - you don’t need to be too gentle with the batter. By the time it’s ready, its consistency will be runnier than you’d think, closer to pancake batter than cake batter.

Fill a pastry bag with batter. You can use a pastry bag with just a coupler, or with a tip. Pipe your shells onto the parchment-paper lined baking sheets, a little more than 2cm in size, spacing them about 2.5cm apart.

When you’re done piping, pick up the pan and whack it down hard against your counter. Do this another time, rotate the pan 90 degrees and do the same thing twice. You might see tiny air bubbles appear on the top of the rounds, a good sign because they could be potentially damaging if buried within the batter. Repeat with the other pan.

Slide the pans into the oven and bake for about 15 minutes, at which point the shells should be able to be cleanly picked off the parchment paper.

Let the shells come to room temperature, then fill macarons with the honey buttercream.

Honey buttercream:

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter using the whisk attachment for about 2 minutes.

Slowly add the confectioner’s sugar, and whisk until everything is incorporated. Do the same with the honey. Beat another minute or so to get everything incorporated.