This week’s obsession: Champagne & Strawberry Macarons

Happy New Year, everyone!

I hope your new year is off to a magnificent start! I ended last year on a pretty high note… I came up with a whole new line of macaron flavors that I want to share with you: Boozy Macs!

I feel like sometimes good ideas take a long time of thinking and planning, but I came up with this line of desserts in about 7 minutes. I know what I like and I know what I’m capable of, so I set to work thinking about my favorite cocktails (some have been featured in Baking and Boozing!) and thought about how to convert them into a macaron and voila! I came up with 6 different boozy flavors and mac adaptations almost immediately.

The first being champagne and strawberries!

I have a tendency to avoid working with flavors I don’t like, which is why you will probably never see a banana or coconut anything float across my menu. I can’t stomach the smell so I don’t work with them at all. But someone on my social media suggested a champagne dessert for my NYE baking, and I told her that I had already dismissed the idea because I can’t have it.

Can’t have it, but not “don’t like it.” So I reconsidered champagne as a viable option for my end of the year baking excursion and not only came up with champagne and strawberry for this week’s dessert, but the whole aforementioned line of boozy macs.

But more about that later.

Right now I want to focus on the composition of today’s treat. I baked simple macaron shells (I say simple, but I was battling the elements the whole time they were baking and a lot of them cracked, but enough were ok that I didn’t have to rebake the whole thing! So, decidedly not simple.) and made a simple pastry cream to fill it with (definitely simple). But as the pastry cream was cooling, I poured a hefty serving of champagne into the bowl and whisked it together to infuse the champagne flavor into it.

I don’t believe I’ve ever really talked about pastry cream on my blog before, so that’s what I’m going to do today. Pastry cream is a versatile filling made of egg yolks, sugar, milk, vanilla, and cornstarch. It’s basically a custard filling that is a go-to for most pastry chefs. Most likely you’ve encountered it in an eclair, fruit tart, or a Napoleon if you frequent French bakeries for treats. It’s simple, it’s sweet, and it can be doctored up any way you would like - such as with champagne!

A word of caution, and your tip of the week for this week - you can’t freeze pastry cream and expect good results when you thaw it out. The elements of the cream will separate and you will just wish that you ate the whole pastry instead of trying to save it for later. My advice is to go full tilt on any dessert you have that includes pastry cream (or at least store it in the fridge and finish it within a day or two to prevent spoilage).

Once I piped the champagne pastry cream onto the mac shells, I piped a small bit of strawberry jam into the center of the cream.

And to make them even more festive, I hand painted each one of them in gold luster dust mixed with champagne for an added oomph! They really are quite pretty, and I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I enjoy eating them!

And now for an announcement for Rebellion Baking:

I am taking on a few new projects right now and will be cutting back on my blog posts. You can still find what I’m making on social media and always feel free to reach out for help, but I believe I’ll need some extra time while I pursue these new endeavors, so I’ve decided to post a blog and/or vlog every other week for the time being. Once things even out on my workload, I’ll get back into the normal swing of things for my blog. Thanks for being a loyal reader - I hope this blog has been helpful so far, and at the very least, entertaining.

I’ll see you in two weeks!

Happy eating, y’all!

If you tried this dessert, or any other desserts in my blog, please share my Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram posts about them and let people know what you think! Mahalo!

#Champagne #macarons #Strawberries #champagneandstrawberries #FrenchPastry #HappyHolidays #TraditionalDesserts #MadeWithLove #design #Dessert #holidaybaking #HolidaySeason #announcement #SFPastryChef #RebelChef #SouthernBaking #LadyChef #RebellionBaking