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It’s February 14th and we can’t escape the love fest, so we hope you enjoy our special Valentine’s macarons. Soy and I have never “celebrated” Valentine’s Day. In fact, we avoid it like the plague. We avoid what we think is a cheesy holiday with an even cheesier excuse that goes something like, ‘Love should be shown everyday not just on one commercialised day of the year when chocolates and flowers cos ten times the usual price… etc etc etc’

But, you can’t escape the red and white flowers, hearts and romantic music all around. So we had to have a Valentine’s Day theme for this month’s Mactweets Mac Attack challenge.

I wanted to do something a bit edgier than a saccharine hearts and flowers theme, so I came up with these Fruits Noir (as in the French ‘frwee nuarh’- black fruits) macarons. I had not yet tried a jam filling in my macarons so this was the perfect chance. I made a blackberry-vanilla compôte, made by stewing blackberries, sugar and a vanilla bean then adding crème de cassis, to make a sweet, sticky, robust, jammy mixture with just the right amount of mouthfeel. Blackberries, blackcurrant (hence the name for my macarons) and vanilla are a match made in heaven, methinks!

As for the shells, we all know love has both a sweet side and a dark side, and when they come together in the perfect proportions, magic happens. Pretty much like these macarons. They were very refreshing and the blackberry vanilla compôte was extremely swoon-worthy. Macarons are usually meant to be eaten one by one and with a strong tea or coffee because they are that sweet and satisfying, but these Fruits Noir macarons could challenge even the biggest sweet tooth around. A compôte is an interesting macaron filling, and one I would do again in future, but perhaps only a small amount paired with a ganache to cut down the level of sweetness.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

honeyandsoy’s Fruits Noir macarons

The recipe for these Fruits Noir macarons can be found in our book Making Failproof Macarons. honeyandsoy’s Making Failproof macarons is now also available as an ebook.

Click here for hardcopy book.

Click here for ebook.

Tags: macarons