When I was a teenager I never liked coffee. My mum was a barista at an exclusive chocolate shop and whenever I went to visit her I'd duck in to make an appearance, perhaps buy a chocolate or two, then would dart for the door as I couldn't stand the smell. How times have changed. Now, like clockwork I buy a cappuccino every morning. In fact, I actually think that I must belong to some exclusive cafe society as I've visited some pretty fantastic cafes all over the world, the most memorable being in Paris, Madrid and Venice. Paris I loved the thick, delicious hot chocolate from Angelina's; Madrid I loved hot chocolate so thick that you could literally stand your spoon straight up in it along with scrumptious churros for breakfast; and, Venice espresso coffee with delicious Venetian pastries. Combining my love of cafes and flowers in the garden I decided to create a cappuccino macaron dusted with crystallised violets. You know it must be pretty good when you have a gorgeous little girl hanging around, who by the way is normally rather blaze about macarons, wanting to taste the ganache and sugared violets.
To make this macaron follow the basic recipe. To make the cappuccino ganache I used a 2:1 ratio of white chocolate to cream and added a splash of cappuccino essence. After piping the ganache, I then sprinkled each one with crushed crystallised violets before assembling them. Here's how they turned out...
And, who ate the enormous crystallised violet displayed in the photo above... the gorgeous little girl!
