Lime Macarons

Lime Macarons
 
Recipes from A Passion for Desserts and Clement Ng
Notes: With all the leftover egg whites from making citrus curd, I thought it might be time to make macarons again. From looking at my own blog, it's been over a year since I last made them, so I had to look over my notes and refresh my memory. I started with Clement's basic recipe, adding about a dozen drops of green food colouring. I don't like to use artificial products if at all possible, but the only other natural source of dye I could think of was green tea, and I didn't want that flavour in these cookies. The shade is lightened considerably as the egg whites develop into a foam, so I gradually increased the colouring until it was a pale green.

For the curd, I used the recipe in Luchetti's book, adding about 5 or 6 drops of green, and one drop of yellow food colouring. The chilled curd resembled fluorescent snot, not the effect I was going for. In retrospect, I needed some blue food colouring to offset the yolks' colour.

After sandwiching the cookies, I refrigerated them for about eight hours before serving. The macarons need this time to soften a bit, or else biting into the cookies results in the filling oozing out. Aside from the weird colours, these turned out pretty well. There wasn't a distinctive lime taste (her recipe for the curd does not include any zest, and the citrus oils are essential for imparting a distinctive flavour) and I would want the consistency of the curd to be thicker so I could put more filling in.

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