Apple and Cinnamon Macarons

After making some successful macarons with lemon and passionfruit fillings, I wanted to try and flavour the shells themselves. Sir D is a big cinnamon lover, and since cinnamon and apple go together like a fat kid and cake, I decided to make cinnamon flavoured macaron shells with an apple compote.

It's been a while since I made my last batch of macarons and I seemed to have lost my touch. The first batch of cinnamon macaron shells failed miserably with cracks appearing on the surface. The second batch was much better because I stood in front of my oven and watched them lke a hawk, but some of them still had a few imperfections on the surface. Seems like I need a lot more practice!

To make the cinnamon flavoured macaron shells I replaced 5g of the icing sugar from the basic macaron recipe with 5g of ground cinnamon. If you like it more or less cinnamon-y just adjust the amount of ground cinnamon you replace for icing sugar.

I was really happy with the overall flavour and that the shells actually tasted like cinnamon. Sir D thought that the combination of the apple compote and the cinnamon shell reminded him of McDonalds apple pie! And anything that reminds people of pie has to be a good thing :)

Apple Crumble

I don't remember exactly when I started baking, but it might have all began around the end of primary school with those kids cookbooks. I have failed in my baking many times - the height of my baking fails would probably be failing even when making a packet cake mixture. Hopefully since then I have improved and now whenever I get a hankering for something sweet after dinner and I don't have many ingredients, I whip up an apple crumble which is especially good on cold winter's nights.

This is a crumble recipe with no oats (since Sir D doesn't like oats) and it produces a crumbly and crunchy crumble at the top. I made this the other night for some friends (with the help of Sir D, debdebdeb and Spud) and it was the perfect end to a great bake night!