i have always wanted to incorporate popcorn into my macarons coz i think the flavor would be so awesome when paired with a salted caramel filling and it really is! all along i've been sticking to one caramel fleur de sel recipe for my macarons which i think is pretty good, but the salted butter caramel cream that pierre herme uses in his macaron book got me really curious. i mean, one that doesn't use fleur de sel, vanilla bean nor glucose/corn syrup, would it be good? i just had to try.


tastewise, its really not bad and i'm surprised since his recipe only uses sugar, whipping cream and butter. not a whole lot of ingredients but its definitely not lacking in flavor, might be because he says to cook the caramel til 'very dark amber color'. it was slightly bitter but paired well with the macarons. then again, i still prefer mine to be much saltier and with a more pronounced vanilla flavor so i will still be sticking to my original recipe in future. also, has anyone tried the la viette butter before? its apparently a "sweet butter from charentes" and pierre herme uses it extensively in his recipes, including this. so my question is, if the butter he uses is sweet, where does the salty flavor come from if he doesn't use any fleur de sel or sea salt? pretty curious about this la viette butter and i must try to get hold of it someday, together with the echiré butter that sadaharu aoki uses! i've never cared much about the butter i use coz i use so little of it in my entremet making and most joconde sponges are butterless, but now i would splurge on better quality butter just to make caramel!

i will only post the recipe for the salted butter caramel cream since i used my own shells. i added some ground popcorn into the macaron batter as well as the tops and you can do the same as well for your favorite macaron recipe.



*recipe removed due to copyright restrictions.