Banana, Toffee and Chocolate Macarons...

Australia's Biggest Morning Tea continues in our tearoom this week. Last week, we managed to raise over $500 for the Cancer Council, and this week my contribution was inspired by leftovers in my kitchen...

I had a small, over ripe banana in my fruit bowl - hardly enough to make a banana cake or some banana muffins, so I thought I'd see if I could use it for a ganache.

I started with a dry caramel - by heating ~100g of sugar in a pan until it liquefies and then turns a golden brown. I then added some cream, folded in my mashed banana, and then added some dark chocolate. I wish I could tell you the exact quantities, but to be honest, I didn't measure anything!

Unfortunately, the ganache didn't set hard enough, so I added some more dark chocolate. The result was quite surprising - the banana flavour was so strong it almost tasted like I had added banana essence into the mixture.

For the shells, follow the generic macaron recipe here.

Caramel centered chocolate macarons...

To start these, make your caramel first:

Melt 100g castor sugar until golden

Add 66g cream (carefully)

Then add 100g butter

Combine until glossy, then put in fridge until ready to use

When ready to pipe, whisk with electric beaters until pale and creamy (see images below)

Caramel before whipping

Caramel after whipping

 Next, make a chocolate ganache (100g chocolate, 100g cream), and allow to cool in the fridge.

For the chocolate macaron shells, use the generic macaron recipe but replace 30g of icing sugar with 30g of cocoa powder.

Once cooled, pipe the whipped caramel in the centre of each macaron.

Then pipe around the caramel with the chocolate ganache (be careful not to use too much or it will spill over the edges)

And the finished product:

Banana, Chocolate and Caramel Macarons

Ganache made with melted Mars Bars (caramel only), chocolate and mashed banana.