Ichigo Daifuku Macarons

Many of you know this already, but Y is getting transferred to the States for a few years, so of course K, T and I are all going along for the ride. It is all kind of sudden, as in we found out last week and we will leave next month. Since we are leaving, I am trying to both not buy things we don't need and also use everything that we have. Good strategy, right?

That being said, however, I was really craving ichigo daifuku - strawberry and sweet bean filled mochi. Yum. It is one of my favorite things. My rice maker can make mochi, perfect! But I didn't have any mochi rice. It is only sold in 5kg bags and there is no way I am going to go through 5kg of mochi rice in such a short time. What I do have a lot of in this house, however, is almond flour. Instead of mochi, I decided I would make ichigo daifuku macarons.

I use Cecile Canone's recipe and I swear by it. If you want to make macarons, I highly recommend her book! You start by combining powdered sugar and almond flour. In a separate bowl, whip up a meringue.

Using a spatula, combine the two until the mixture is smooth and delicious looking.

Pipe them out and let them rest for a while. Finally bake them up.

Once they are baked you can add pretty much any filling and they are nearly guaranteed to be delicious. For mine, I obviously wanted sweet bean and strawberries. I started by rolling little balls of sweet bean.

Then I flattened each ball into a disk and put one on both the top and bottom macaron. Then I cut up a strawberry, put it in the middle and made a little sandwich. I made them "to order" as I was afraid the strawberry would get weird if I left it cut for too long.

I'm not going to lie, I LOVE macarons. I have made them numerous times at this point, but these are easily my favorite. They satisfied my craving, but then I just wanted to eat more of them. Between Y, K and I, these were gone pretty quickly. K devoured them, kid doesn't mess around with macarons - according to him, they are his favorite cookie. I'm raising a smart kid, yo!