How to make rose macarons

Rose macarons are a delicate, fragrant, very feminine version of these treats.

The flavour is similar to turkish delight - I only say that because I don't come across rose flavouring very often and that's the only comparison that comes to mind.

Aside from the normal macaron ingredients, you need rose syrup for the flavouring.
This is difficult to find, and I looked everywhere without success before dropping some massive hints to my parents. They got on the case and I was delighted to unwrap a shiny bottle of Sirop de Monin - Rose from an Express Post parcel on my birthday yay!

You may be wondering why I didn't use rosewater or rose essence. You can get these much more easily. I haven't tried to use either, and they may work as well, but I thought the syrup would be safer as macaron mixture is very bad-tempered in a culinary sense and I didn't want to stress it by adding something watery like rosewater. I am still quite traumatised by my experience when trying to make raspberry macarons, when I added an icy raspberry coulis to the mixture and it turned into the macarons from hell.

So I started off in the normal way with the tant pour tant (for detailed instructions on how to make it, see here)...

... And to the tant pour tant mixture I added the rose syrup. I used two capfuls, but did it gradually, adding one first and then tasting.

Then you need to add a bit of colour because although the syrup has a pink tint it's not deep enough to colour the mixture. This is the gel colour I use. The amount on the very end of the spoon handle is about all you need - again it's really important to add it gradually, and start small, because you can always add more but you can't go backwards.

This is the colour of the mixture after the colouring was added. It was perfect for what I wanted, but....

... By the time I had added the other half of the mixture - the meringue - the colour had become a little too diluted. I wish I'd added just a bit more colour up front.

These are the piping bags I use. They are easy to fill but I always tend to put too much mixture in them.

So by the time I'm piping, there is sticky, gooey mixture absolutely everywhere.

If you can get past the mess, it's good to hold the piping bag vertical and pipe downwards - you get nice even circles that way.

Once they are all piped they need to sit and firm up and form a skin for half an hour - here they are sitting and having a little think about themselves before being baked.
The pink mixture in the bowl is the buttercream - I'll get to that eventually :-)

Because of my shocker of an experience with raspberry macarons (if you feel like reading about it you'll find it here) I was really worried about whether the rose syrup would work. I couldn't wait until they came out of the oven, I had to have a peep while they were still in there. I was so relieved and happy to see them rising up on their little 'feet' like good little macarons should.

So then I started on the buttercream filling. This is variable according to your taste but is about one part unsalted butter to three parts icing sugar, plus an egg yolk. Beat them all together with an electric beater until you have a firm but smooth textured mix.

I added the rose syrup to this, about two capfuls and then dipped a very small amount of pink colouring into the mix...

... Which turned a LURID pink, way brighter than I wanted. Bugger!

The finished product wasn't exactly right in colour terms, although they were still pretty.

I had envisaged the shells being a bit darker and the buttercream being a bit lighter, so there wouldn't be much of a colour difference between the two.

They looked good with other pastel shades. These are pistachio macarons left over from another batch (recipe here). 

A quick tasting note on these macarons, the rose syrup makes them very sweet - that sounds obvious as all macarons are sweet, but some flavours like pistachio and coffee have lots of flavour with less additional sugar. So beware, these are best for true sweet tooths.