A gush of bird-song, a patter of dew,
A cloud, and a rainbow’s warning,
Suddenly sunshine and perfect blue
An April day in the morning.
Harriet Prescott Spofford
It’s the time of the month where the mac passionate folk amongst us strut our stuff… that is FEET! We host the monthly event at Mactweets, the brainchild of Jamie and me, where a bunch of us get together and bake macarons to a theme. The theme for April was ‘What’s Your Holiday?’, and it was an all encompassing one.
Whatever your celebration was, be it Easter, a birthday, Passover, April Fool’s Day (Poisson d’Avril for you Francophiles), World Health Day or Earth Day etc. My choice was Earth Day, and I almost never got there. The story is long, I don’t want to write the saga, and you certainly don’t want to read it! To cut it short, the fiddly feet didn’t appear over 8 attempts, and the ones I post today are ones I found in between, but wasn’t too happy with. They make me feel happy now though, since the filling was fun!
I’m posting them because I was egged on to ‘show my feet‘ by Mardi at Eat Live Travel Write last evening, who promised she wouldn’t laugh at my feet, and would stand by me. Jamie showed off the most amazing feet in a picture on twitter, and reasserted that she indeed is the Mac Queen!! I am still in search of a 100% macaron success rate, but am inspired (or stupid enough), whichever way you want to look at it, to keep trying on a daily basis.
The filling is the part I liked best. I wanted to make matcha macs for Earth Day, in blues and greens, but it was not to be as they spread and bubbled alarmingly like lava once in the oven. Man Friday is having a field day. He takes my failed attempts home for his son everyday, so I have an alternate to filling, stacking and hiding my epic failures.
Earth Day is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment and is held on April 22. It was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in in 1970 and is celebrated in many countries every year. Earth Day is in spring in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. My message is simple … lets try and go local, reduce waste, recycle, save energy and water, spread the words, look at sustainable development … i.e. do our bit for the Earth! In the micro sense, I piped my macarons with recycled bags, and also recycled my failed macarons to sweeten the buttercream filling. Another good idea for failed macarons could be these Mac-Verrines!
I hung on to the failed matcha macs, made with some precious matcha from a little box Meeta brought for me at the FBC in London. Matcha is finely-milled Japanese green tea. I guard it with my life because I find the colour so fascinating. I HAD to put the failed matcha macs to some good use, so I ran them in the grinder and milled them back to powder. I made a butter-cream sweetened with matcha macaron powder, sandwiched my macs with them and came away singing! All thanks to egging on by Mardi and Jamie!!
Do stop by and look at the round up at MacTweets which shall be up later today. There is amazing creativity amongst our folk, and they never fail to impress!
Milled Nut Flour Macarons
Recipe for macarons from Ottolenghi – The Cookbook, posted here
Macaron Butter-cream Filling
10-15 macarons (I used failed matcha macarons)
1/4 cup butter, slightly soft
1 tbsp cream
Method:
Grind the macarons in a coffee/ nut grinder till fine.
Beat the butter and cream until light and fluffy. Add most of the macaron powder, and continue to beat till of the correct consistency. Add more macaron powder if need be.
Assembling:
Turn macarons so their flat bottoms face up, and match the halves for size.
On half of them, pipe about 1 teaspoon of butter-cream and sandwich these with the remaining macaroons, flat-side down, pressing slightly to spread the filling to the edges.
Allow to set in a closed box, in the fridge. They taste better after 24 hours.
♥ Thank you for stopping by ♥
Do you want to join us making MACARONS?? If you do, you are most welcome to join the ‘Attack’. You can find all the information at our dedicated macaron blog MacTweets. The rules for can be found here. You can always join us next month. Just drop us a mail or tweet.
Don’t miss a post 
Deeba…Love the determination you have about Macs… I would have given up long back…
1 failed cake due to an oven conking off had me in tears….Football is an incredible game… So make Football Cake for MAN-U Fan, Karan
The macs look lovely and the green goes so well with your theme..
You can throw the failed macs in my direction aswell… would love to savour them, feet or no feet 🙂
You're really an inspiration…..
Cheers to many more Macs,
The Variable, Crazy Over Desserts – Nachiketa
Catch me on facebook @ Crazy Over Desserts
Didnt have time to participate in the event, but ur macs look fab! You said it failed. Still, I'm sure it looked good and tasted even better. Love matcha!
Splendis macarons and shots!
Cheers,
Rosa
Ok, I don't think I can sit any longer after seein all this. I'll be there next month, and that's apromise I'll keep! 🙂
By the way, if it'll make Man Friday happier, I'll send you some of my failures, shall I? ;-D
I tried with Macha and it failed so i didn't make them again.
Hats off to you for trying and atleast you posted them. I love the painitn you have done on the shells.
I have never tasted matcha does it taste like tea?
I love the idea of griding mac into the filling, it must be very rich! …rather like a double chocolate muffin … have you invented the "double mac" mac ?!
From the Mac Queen to the Perseverance Queen: your macs, feetless or footed are always beautiful! So sorry about no happy feet but you always find the most intriguing flavors and the most beautiful decoration. So glad you decided to post these beauties! Love you, hon!
Lovely!
I would have given up on macarons on my first attempt Deeba so I just continue to admire all your gorgeous creations. Happy Earth Day!
Absolutely lovely. I need to give these little guys a try sometime (I keep saying that).
🙂
ButterYum
What a clever spot of recycling Deeba! The colours are gorgeous even if they weren't quite what you were after. I think they look very cute. Welldone, I always admire your perseverance.
The pictures and the macarons are so pretty! I love the greens to go with your theme! I wish I could take on another challenge (the macs!), but am afraid I would go totally insane!
Deeba, your determination is inspiring.. I have no takers (not even Man Friday) for even properly done Macs (hub got too sick of my experiments and has firmed banned it..lol)
Love the green hues.. so earthy and perfect!
The color os your macs is so pretty. I love that you ground the failed macs for filling.
Great well-written post. Seems like we're kindred spirits. As both our blog are eco-friendly. Have a wonderful day.
Beautiful macarons. I've never tried matcha but hope to soon. I didn't know about Mactweets and was thrilled that you shared the info for me to bookmark. Thanks!
The colors are great for Earth Day! Great macs and pics! Way to go!
OMW – you milled the macs and used them in cream??????????? Amazing!!!!!!!! Superb, well done. I love Matcha too for the same reasons – the colour, the vibrant colour. The feet will come Deeba, maybe its the heat?????
Great macarons. I've never seen any made this way. Nice to see some variation.
Macarons and matcha a delicious idea with gorgeous photos as always Deeba!
All the best,
Gera
Gorgeous pictures and the macarons look scrumptious. I have to give matcha flavour a try soon.
How frustrating to have feet one month and then the next month nothing but frustration. I love that your man Friday likes to take the no-feet macs home. They really do taste delicious with feet or no feet.
Once again your post is stunningly beautiful with or without perfect feet!
matcha buttercream filling? yes please! wonderful photos.
What a wonderful theme you chose to create these beautiful macarons. The colours and photographs are exquisite!
Hehe it may sound weird in and of itself but "Phwaor Deeba, nice feet! 😉 ". Gorgeous and so, so appropriate for Earth Day darling! 😀
Deeba, first time at your blog, blown away by your recipes and photographs. Macaroons look so apt for earthday !!
Haha I am laughing at Lorraine's "Phwoar" (such an Aussie expression!!) but she's right – nice feet after all that and a GREAT use for the failed macs – must remember that next time!!! I love how supportive MacTweets has been for me and you know, just when you think you can't attempt any more and have them fail, someone will tweet and say "how are the feet Mardi" and off I will go to try all over again! Thanks for being one of my inspirations in the kitchen! xoxo
I would probably be the worst macaron baker because I'm of the camp that says, if it tastes good then who cares how it looks! And these sound like they taste amazing, even if they don't quite have the feet that you were going for.
Wow, Deeba! You deserve a medal for sticking with it through EIGHT batches! You're amazing. 🙂 I LOVE the color of the tea! So vivid and bright! 🙂
I love the color from the matcha! You picked a great theme and did an amazing job of recycling!
i fell in love with all things matcha when i went to tokyo. these look perfect.
I've never tried matcha flavored anything but these are perfect for Earth Day. Beautiful as always!
These are so lovely! I like the presentation in the photos! I think I should give this a try.
great idea for this month «holliday»!
i love mactweets, looking foward to the next challenge
What a lovely idea to do these in celebration of Earth Day:-)
They look pretty feet-y to me. You know I know where you're coming from after my shenanigans getting feet. Since I switched sugars I've not have a problem so I don't know why it grows wrong for you.
Nevertheless, these look beautiful and thanks for telling me about Earth Day, I've not heard much about it over here as we're all obsessed with volcanos and our general election at the moment!!!
((hugs!))
very very impressive, both the macaroons and the artistic photography.
Your macaroons positively look divine 🙂
The photos are stunning and mouth watering…. thanks for sharing your recipe!
If you are into Matcha, check out Zendori’s Organic Culinary Matcha – perfect for cooking and baking.
Thanks for sharing your recipe and for giving me an idea for my daughter’s birthday giveaway dessert.
Yaaaay! I really LOOOOVE french macarons and green tea matcha! But I didn’t realize I can actually make green tea matcha macarons until I saw this blog! Thank you for sharing this recipe! So excited to try this!