Musk Macarons

When I was little, we didn't have computers.  We had to make our own fun. Sometimes we'd help our nanna out in her fruit and vegetable shop. My sisters and I would pop our aprons on and we'd have competitions on who could make the most money.  Sometimes, we'd go into our nanna's cool room when she wasn't watching and eat the strawberries off the top of the punnets and surreptitiously drink little bottle's of soft drink with swirly paper straws covered in wax.  We'd sit in the cool room giggling at the mischief we got up to but also sat there in fear of getting into trouble from our mum and dad.  I was always getting into to trouble!

In those days, life seemed simple and we'd take great delight in taking our pocket money and spending it at the local corner shop.  Nearly every block had a corner shop as we didn't have huge supermarket chains.  Our favourite past time was running to the shop flat to the boards with 20c and buying the biggest bag of lollies ever.  It was filled with cobbers, bananas, teeth, milk bottles, Musk Sticks, frogs, jelly beans, raspberries, love hearts, mint leaves, freckles, Fantales, Metro gum and other yummy stuff.  We'd walk back home very, very slowly with our cheeks bursting at the seams.

Reminiscing about all those lovely Australian lollies I've devoted my latest macaron to the iconic Musk Stick which is totally yumdelish.  And, if you still think you're 16, I dare you to go out and buy some Musk Sticks and try to shape the end of one into a sharp point with your tongue - just don't stab your friends with it!

To make this macaron follow my basic recipe using cochineal to colour the macaron pink.  Make a ganache with a 2:1 ratio of white chocolate to cream and add a couple of drops of musk oil. You can also colour the ganache with the cochineal.   After you pipe the ganache onto the macaron shells, sprinkle some crushed Musk Sticks on top then place its lid on top.