Thanks to Ottolenghi for a terrific macaron recipe that creates the right texture - smooth on top, little bubbles at the base - the salty peanut caramel and chocolate is their recipe too. The chestnut is from www.foodbeam.com, minus the flour (an accident due to tiredness, which turned out ok in the end. cough).
The caramel is dulce de leche - that I made from sweetened condensed milk - using a saucepan to heat it up and turn it into a thick caramel. However, I went much to far and dried it out (only realised later when it cooled and started to set rock hard). I recovered this by adding more milk :) and heating it, and blitzing it. Worked fine, was but was unnecessary. Really interesting to work with a new substance tho'.
I sandwiched the chocolate macarons with ganache (as the recipe states), the chestnut ones with dulce de leche. The salty peanut ones - had peanuts and salt added to the dulce de leche caramel, surprisingly.
I think they need a bit more height, and the chestnut recipe needs tweaking. And I need to pay more attention when cooking them! I was knackered and managed to put icing sugar and caster sugar into the blender, for no constructive purpose. Sometimes you should just stop cooking. But I didn't, and these are pretty tasty :)
Wow, I didn't get the chance to come visit recently but will definitely do more often. Everything looks fantastic - and the macarons are stunning (really like the idea of chestnut in a macaron :). I hope you are well and enjoy it all!
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