Raspberry Dark Chocolate Chinese New Year Macarons (shells made with raspberry Italian meringue)

I was tending to two last minute requests for Valentine's Day rose macarons and thought why not include a small number of Chinese new year related macarons too since I planned to make a batch large enough to have some spare capacity. I made these without preparing a template but instead used circle template as guides.

You may refer to this post for the detailed recipe for macaron shells and the links for raspberry white chocolate and dark chocolate ganache filings. As mentioned in that earlier post, I would test out doubling the amount of raspberry puree used in the Italian meringue and reduce the amount of water accordingly. I love the resulting Italian meringue with a more noticeable pink shade, stronger raspberry flavour and aroma! The meringue actually had a slightly sour aftertaste!

Raspberry Italian meringue made using 20g puree and 35g water

I was running low on red batter after piping the Valentine's Day macarons so the bottom shells are piped this way...

There seems to be no noticeable difference in the ease of working with higher percentage of raspberry puree in the Italian meringue, except that the batter could become more hygroscopic (tends to absorb moisture from the air). Longer drying times seem to be needed and the membrane formed may be a little weaker if not dried long enough. As such, you may choose to use a lower percentage of raspberry puree if you don't want to wait for too long for the shells to dry.

I used black edible marker and royal icing to decorate the shells.

Freshly baked and decorated! Forgot to put the blusher on the boy and girl macarons when I took this photo.

Raspberry and dark chocolate combi is an excellent choice as they are both strong flavoured and reduce the overall sweetness of the confectionery.

Filling the shells.

Blessed Chinese New Year to all!

With love,
Phay Shing