Lemon Macarons with Rosemary – Fresh Spring Flavours

I made these Lemon Macarons with Rosemary in honour of my mother. Because her name is Rosemarie and it is Mother’s Day in the UK during this month (and usually March unless Easter is especially late).

I have been very fortunate to have my mother visiting this Mother’s Day weekend. She lives 100 miles away on her boat and I look forward greatly to her trips to London.

The inspiration for my Lemon Macarons with Rosemary

The ingredients for the macaron shells were adapted from Ottolenghi, The Cookbook, “Lime and Basil Macarons”. However the filling is different and my method departs from theirs a lot. I’m from the “beat it to death” school rather than softly softly.

Using Lemon Buttercream to fill Macarons

Here I have used a buttercream that was leftover from lemon cupcakes. This quantity of buttercream makes enough to cover 12 cupcakes so it’s pretty generous amount here. I haven’t scaled it down as it’s harder to mix  the buttercream ingredients if quantities are too small. But we aware you will have ample buttercream and likely up to a third more than you need. Buttercream will store in the fridge for a week although it will firm up in there.

Alternative Fillings for Lemon Macarons

You might fill these macarons with melted white chocolate or white chocolate thinned down with some cream as white chocolate ganache. A quark mousse as seen in my chocolate quark mousse  would work – replace milk chocolate with white chocolate.

You’ll find alternative buttercreams etc in some of my other baking posts – off the top of my head there’s lavender buttercream as used in my lavender layer cake, chestnut buttercream used in chocolate chestnut layer cake or simply vanilla.

I have used dried rosemary here – which you can see if the close up photo above. I only had dried rosemary available to me at the time so I’ve not compared making these lemon macarons with fresh rosemary. The natural oils in the rosemary leaves might mean they break down into a mush rather than dry powder. I haven’t tested it that way so bear that in mind if you’re tempted to use fresh rosemary.

Print Recipe

5 from 1 vote

Lemon Macarons with Rosemary

A reliable lemon macaron recipe with spring flavours and colours.

Prep Time25 minutes mins

Cook Time15 minutes mins

Resting Time20 minutes mins

Total Time1 hour hr

Course: Dessert, Patisserie, pudding, Snack

Cuisine: Classic, French

Keyword: lemon macarons

Servings: 18

Calories: 139kcal

Equipment

• 1 Food processor
• 1 Hand held mixer with paddle beater attachment
• 2 Baking sheets lined with non stick baking parchment paper
• 1 Piping bag

Ingredients

• 110 g icing sugar
• 50 g ground almonds
• 1 tsp dried rosemary finely ground - I use a coffee grinder reserved for nuts/seeds etc
• 1 lemon zested
• 1/2 tsp natural lemon flavouring (use flavouring rather than fresh lemon juice, so not to water down your macaron batter)
• 2 egg whites 60g worth, left to age for 2 days
• 40 g caster sugar (superfine baking sugar)
• yellow gel food colouring a touch (optional)

For The Lemon Buttercream

• 80 g butter
• 250 g icing sugar (confectioners sugar)
• 40 ml semi skimmed milk
• 1 tbsp lemon juice (from the lemon you've zested)

Instructions

• Sift the icing sugar, almonds and rosemary into the food processor and blitz to give yourself an even finer powder.
• In a large mixing bowl, whisk the egg whites to a foam using an electric mixer then add the caster sugar gradually and continue beating until you have a meringue that stands in soft peaks. Add the gel food colouring on the end of a cocktail stick and then continue beating once more until you get stiff peaks and the colour has been mixed throughout.
• Tip all the icing sugar, almonds and rosemary on top. Using a silicon spatula, sweep around the bowl in a circle and then cut sideways strokes with the thin blade of the spatula through the centre backwards and forwards ten times. Repeat sweeping around the edge of the bowl and doing your ten strokes five times so that you've done fifty strokes.  Your batter should be roughly ready by this point, you are looking for a flowing lava effect. If it is too stiff continue sweeping around the edge of the bowl and doing another ten strokes until you are happy with the flow. (This recipe seemed to require a  lot more strokes than usual... Maybe 80... I’m not sure why this happened today)
• Fill piping bags with the batter, I use disposable ones with around 1.5cm width snipped of the end. Fix parchment paper to your baking sheet with a blob of meringue batter in each corner.  
• Pipe discs in a circular movement around the size of a two pound coin (4cm). Allow a similar distance between the piped circles incase they spread. Pick the tray up with both hands and rap on the table firmly to bang any air bubbles out and make the circles of batter settle.
• Preheat the oven to 150c.  Leave the piped circles near a radiator for 20 minutes to dry out (winter only). In summer, leave for 20-30 minutes.  The surface of the circles should dry out so that they are no longer sticky to the touch.  The feet develop as the surface has toughened before the centre has cooked, the pressure that builds up under heating forces the top of the macaron to rise, then you should get feet.
• Bake for 12-18 minutes depending on size. The length of time really is trial and error.  I put mine on the lowest oven shelf but again you will need to experiment. And everyone's oven is different - never more obvious than with macarons!
• Hopefully, if you've cooked them enough but not too much, you'll have that happy medium of a surface that peels beautifully off the baking parchment but a meringue which remains soft inside. If you are having trouble removing them from the paper, some drops of water sprinkled under the parchment whilst still warm will help steam the macarons off. But I find that they come off best when completely cool and don't need this. So don't be impatient!
• When cool, spread your filling on the flat side of a shell and sandwich with another, squeezing gently.  Allow to set for a couple of hours. I find they keep in an airtight tin for a week. If you can resist them.

Notes

This should yield 18-24 pairs of macaron shells - depending on air volume and how big you pipe them, it's hard to give an exact figure. Naturally the calorie content will be less if you end up with more smaller ones, and it's only a guide anyway. 

The ingredients for the shells have been adapted from Ottolenghi, The Cookbook, “Lime and Basil Macarons” although my method departs from theirs in that I’m from the “beat it to death” school rather than softly softly. The buttercream was leftover lemon cupcake frosting. This quantity of buttercream makes enough to cover 12 cupcakes so you will need to scale the amounts down if you only want a small amount to fill macaron shells. 

More Macaron Flavours

Have you got the macaron bug? After an initial struggled I’ve made these a few times here:

Chocolate Macarons with chocolate ganache filling

Chocolate Coffee Macarons with chocolate Philadelphia filling

Hot Cross Bun Macarons with Easter Hot Cross Bun spices!

The front cover of my 2012 book Bake Me I’m Yours… Sweet Bitesize Bakes also features rose macarons. You can grab a copy on Kindle using that (affiliate) link above.