Peanut macarons with blueberry filling

The first time that I tried to bake french macarons was in the last year. I had never tasted them before I baked, and the first bite was something other than impression. I found the shells are extrem sweet ... too sweet for me. Since then I never baked it again until the past 2 months.

I began to bake macarons again. This time with many different flavors such as raspberry, lemon, banana, poppy seed, vanilla and so on. One of my favorite flavor is this peanut macarons with blueberry butter cream filling .

Ingredients : for around 40 shells

For the macarons shells :
40g roasted ground peanuts
40g ground almonds
130g powdered sugar
70g egg white (about 2 egg whites, M size)
1 pinch salt
20g granulated sugar
green food colouring

For the blueberry filling :
15 fresh blueberries
15g granulated sugar
2 tbsp. orange juice
70g butter
15g powdered sugar

Instructions :

Line the bottom of baking tray with parchment paper. Combine ground peanut, ground almond and powdered sugar together, put them in the blender und grind until finely ground. Then sift them through a sieve, set aside.

Put egg whites, salt and food colouring together in the bowl, whisk until foamy and slowly beat in the granulated sugar until egg whites having soft peaks form.

Gently fold about 1/3 of dry mixture in the foamy egg whites by using rubber spatula until incorporated. Repeat with the further 1/3 of dry mixture into the batter and fold in, then the rest of dry mixture, just until the mixture getting shiny and flow like magma. Do not over mix.

Fit the pastry bag with a round tip. Fill the batter in the bag and pipe about 3 cm small rounds onto the parchment lined baking trays. Tap the underside of the baking trays to remove air bubbles. Let the shells dry for 20-30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 150 celsius and when the oven is ready place the tray in the middle of the oven and bake for about 10 minutes or until firm. Whereas, use a wooden spoon to keep the oven door slightly ajar through the baking time.

Take the tray out from the oven and let the shells cool for awhile before remove them from the parchment paper. Place the shells on a wire rack untill completely cool and fill with the blueberry filling.

For the filling, wash blueberries and cut in half. Put them in a small pot, add in granulated sugar and orange juice. Place the pot on the medium heat and regularly stir until it cooked. Let it cooks for about 2 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the jam cool.

Then using an electric mixer, beat butter until pale and fluffy, then gradually beat in powdered sugar until combined. Stir in cooled blueberry jam in the butter untill well combined. Finally, sandwich the macaroons shells with blueberry butter cream.

Place in the refrigerator for a few hours to have a better flavor and bring them out for 15 minutes before serving. Enjoys your macarons!