Chocolate Banana Macarons

Hi everyone, happy Friday! erm..Saturday. Tomorrow is a friend's birthday, and he told me he liked a banana chocolate macaron he tried from when I took a macaron class. Unfortunately, I did not make that macaron because each person in the class was assigned. So I decided to recreate it :)

In the original macaron, the shells were not flavored. But I wanted to throw in an extra twist and put real bananas in the shells! Using freeze dried bananas from Trader Joe's :) I really love Trader Joe's! They have so many items that you can't find anywhere else (except Whole Foods or something, but Trader Joe's is much cheaper) and they're reasonable prices. Mostly where I get my almonds to make the macarons as well.

Anyways, I replaced 10g of almonds in the usual recipe with 10g of freeze dried bananas that I ground up in a food processor and sifted. This gave the shells a yummy, chewy consistency and a strong banana flavor.

See the insides are nice and soft, as well as fluffy. The outer shells on these are really thin, so it doesn't really crunch when you bite it. But that way it gives you the consistency of real fruit. I used a regular semisweet chocolate ganache as the filling. I tried to add banana flavor into the ganache, but for some reason the semisweet chocolate probably outshines the banana flavor. So instead when you bite into it, it reminds me of those chocolate dipped bananas. Yum...give it a try :)

Also, while I was making these today, I accidentally didn't let the sugar syrup boil to 240, so I was left with a wet, droopy meringue. Don't let that happen...or else you'll get cracked mushy things with atrocious feet. I had to toss those and make a new batch. Luckily I only made half a batch. Lesson learned: do not try to take shortcuts :/