Bana-nutella Macarons

My buddy Joyce is a trained pastry chef. I know! I'm so lucky!

She bakes recreationally as opposed to professionally these days, and her specialty is macarons, the delightfully delicate almond meringue sandwich cookies. Making macarons is a different and fun way to experiment with flavor combinations in non-lollipop form, and I recently got hold of a few flavored baking emulsions...

Luckily, Joyce keeps a packed kit on standby for bringing her talents to wherever she's needed. She just grabs a hunk of buttercream from her freezer stash (yes, you read that correctly), and armed with a pair of pastry bags and tips, almond flour, silpat mats, and other goodies, she's ready.

The plan: Banana flavored cookies filled with Nutella buttercream...

Joyce models the Banana baking emulsion... it's more viscous and cloudy than a flavor extract.
Supposedly, emulsions don't "bake out" as readily as extracts. 

I love vibrant colors, so obviously I wanted Electric Yellow
to color the meringue for the cookies!

Joyce pipes like a pro. Because she IS a pro.

I pipe like a doofus. Because I AM a doofus. Well, I'm just inexperienced.
This awkwardness is *after* I switched to using my dominant hand to squeeze the bag. 

We forgot to take pictures of making and piping the
Nutella buttercream, but here's a finished cookie. Yum!

Overall we judged it a mixed success. The cookies tasted good on their own, and the Nutella buttercream tasted good too. In sandwich form, the banana flavor got a little lost next to the Nutella. Letting them hang out overnight in the fridge helped though - I think they tasted more balanced the next day.

Do you have a favorite macaron combination?

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Back to (Charm) School!

Summer's almost over and the kids are heading back to school... so we figured our Charm School Dropouts could use some love. 

From now until Labor Day, Sept 2, buy a dozen lollipops in of any of our flavors and you'll receive a complimentary set of 8 Charm School Dropouts. These are over-poured, under-poured, lumpy or otherwise ugly suckers that still taste awesome. It's a great way to try a random mix of flavors - and perhaps discover a new favorite... I'm sure that under your charming influence, these Dropouts will flourish!