Apple Pie Macarons with Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

Between last year and Pinterest, I was able to remember that Chiara is a fall megafan. Since she was recently in Paris I immediately decided to make apple pie macarons and use what I could of the caramel frosting (from July) as the filling. One problem: I couldn't really find a good macaron recipe that had apple pie spice in it (I finally broke down and got a container off Amazon). You'd think it'd be easy; however, most recipes I came across either had another source for the apple flavor in the macarons (like freeze-dried apples - no idea where to find those) or had the apple flavor in the filling instead of the shells. Finally, I found a recipe on The Macaron Queen for apple pie macarons.

Apple Pie Macarons with Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

Apple Pie Macarons (source)

• 130g almond flour
• 200 g confectioners sugar
• 1 1/2 tbsp apple pie spice (powder)
• 100g egg whites (aged- about 4-5 days separated from the yolk and refrigerated. Covered in a saran wrap/ Tupperware - didn't do this as the exact age has never seemed to matter. I did leave them out overnight though)
• 1/4 tsp egg white powder (couldn't find it anywhere so I just used cream of tarter, which other macaron recipes use)
• 20g granulated sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1 drop Wilton Green coloring gel (I just used some liquid food coloring I have. And I used red because I wanted them to look like red apples)

Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

• Ingredients and recipe here

Directions

1. Mix the almond flour, confectioners sugar and apple pie spice in a food processor. You can pour everything into the processor and then mix the content with a butter knife before turning it on.
2. Sift the ingredients
3. Microwave the egg white at 15 seconds at high to further thicken the egg white. Make sure that the egg white is not cooked. (didn't do this - seemed unnecessary)
4. Place the egg white in a mixing bowl and sprinkle the salt.
5. Whisk at low speed until becomes foamy.
6. Add in the egg white powder.
7. Add in granulated sugar gradually and continue to whisk until it turns soft peak.
8. Add in coloring and continue to whisk until it is between soft and stiff peak (medium peak). You don't want it to be too stiff.
9. Add in the almond mix gradually and fold until the batter is evenly mix. Avoid mixing like crazy because that will create bubbles. (I know, it is very tempting to do that)
10. Put in piping bag and pipe them an inch apart. (I also let them sit for over an hour, which you're supposed to do)
11. Bake at 315 F for 15 minute at the lowest shelf. Let cool.
12. Sandwich frosting between two shells

As you can see, they didn't rise/create feet like in the past. I have a few theories about that: I overmixed the batter; the food coloring added too much liquid; I didn't sift the dry ingredients enough to make the batter smooth (which led to overmixing the batter as I tried to get rid of the lumps); the ingredients weren't measured exact (since it's given as metric here I used a converter to find out how many cups/spoons would be needed. Still was a bit off apparently). Could have been any or all of these things (I would also love to figure out why my batter spreads after I pipe it on the baking sheet. I've successfully made these 3 times and all 3 times it's done that).

Still, Chiara and her family loved them. Her mom even called them "FALL in a cookie." And isn't this container I got to wrap them in adorable? Found it at The Container Store in the gift wrapping section after an extensive search for a fall-themed cookie tin (it's called a Happle and comes in green as well and the red is also in large). I figured she could clean it and store school supplies or something in it. Maybe even put it on her desk when she becomes a teacher.