Mexican Hot Chocolate Macarons and Prune Powder Macarons

I love Mexican hot chocolate as much as I love all other types of chocolate. I decided to have another macaron adventure this week and replaced the cocoa powder in David Lebovitz's French Chocolate Macaron recipe with Mexican hot chocolate powder...just to see what would happen. It turns out that these are some of the prettiest, best tasting macarons I've made so far (I'm not really a fan of macarons....don't kill me). In addition to replacing the cocoa powder with Mexican hot chocolate, I added a dash of cayenne, pepper, and cinnamon to enhance the flavor a little bit, although Mexican hot chocolate usually already has these spices. I also added a bit of those spices to the dark chocolate ganache filling. These macarons tasted exactly like mexican hot chocolate- if you like macarons and mexican hot chocolate I recommend trying these! Mexican hot chocolate can be found at most grocery stores, sometimes in the form of tablets (one popular brand is Abuelita). The tablets can be ground up or smashed into a powder. If you cannot find mexican hot chocolate, there are many recipes out there to make your own that usually consists of cocoa, cinnamon, cayenne and some pepper. Just use the recipe as a base for the powder.

I know these look orange and like they might be orange macarons but they are actually supposed to be prune. I was walking around the asian supermarket and spotted a packet of pinkish powder with a picture of what i thought were cherries on the front. I couldn't read the packaging but the ingredients on the back said it consisted of 'dried fruit'. I assumed it was cherry powder (I have no idea for what specific use) and wanted to try making cherry powder macarons. Well it turns out that the powder was actually prune powder and with a very strong flavor. I used a standard macaron recipe and just sprinkled in maybe a few teaspoons of the powder. It had a very distinct flavor and color- there is no added color to these macarons except whatever was in the powder! The consistancy was a strange because the shells were not hard enough but I am not sure if it was due to the powder or other factors.