Cocoa macarons with chocolate cream cheese filling + 2 year blog anniversary!

Today our blog is two years old! :) Therefore, we have a little surprise. For the first time in our little virtual kitchen, we proudly present these lovely macarons. 
The fanciest French cookie of all times! An epitome of French debauchery, as far as food goes! (And also the hardest to make - achieving victory when making these is a terribly important cultural milestone for any amateur chefs out there, so we might as well be proud too ;) ). Since it's our blog anniversary, we decided to post these rather than a cake, since it's such an important achievement for all the wannabees in the baking business ;).

The basic recipe we followed is here.
But the inspiration (and especially the encouragements we needed in order to dare) came from here. Thanks Andie! :). 

Last year: Classic Chocolate cream pie (American) + 1-year blog anniversary.
Two years ago: Complete-meal salad with basil and Simple fried bananas with cinnamon and honey. (A.k.a. our humble beginnings). :)




Ingredients:

• 100 g blanched almond flour (you can grind skinless almonds or almond flakes in order to make it if you can't find it in supermarkets)
• 175 g powder sugar
• 3 egg whites at room temperature
• 30 g granulated sugar
• 2 and 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder

For the filling: 

• 100 g cream cheese 
• 50 g melted chocolate

Preheat oven to 150 degrees C.
First of all, sift the powder sugar. With patience and love :)

Sift the almond flour in the same bowl afterwards.

Beat the egg whites with a mixer, gradually incorporating the granulated sugar. When the meringue is stiff, gently mix it with the almonds and powder sugar. Also add the cocoa. The final composition should have a silky ribbon-like texture:

Use a pastry bag or an icing syringe to pipe the composition on a baking paper-lined tray:

Make sure you space them more apart than we did :D (because as you can see below a lot of them came together after a while) and let them sit at room temperature for at least 15 minutes (up to an hour), until they develop a dry-ish crust:

When the crust is formed, put them into the preheated oven and bake for 17-19 minutes. Take out and allow them to cool on the tray for at least 15 minute before removing them from the paper.

Now, the hardest part is done. To make the filling, melt the chocolate and mix it in the cream cheese. Resist the temptation to add more sugar, as you'll see the macaroon shells are sweet enough.
Find the ideal match as far as size goes for each macaroon and glue them together using the filling.

They're done, dig in! :)