Last month I got wrapped up in the pumpkin spice madness. I think it is because two of the blogs I read have been pretty crazy about pumpkin spice this year…

I thought that macarons would be the perfect vessel for some pumpkin spice awesomeness. I searched online for pumpkin spice macarons and I found several variations. I decided to add pumpkin spice to the macaron shells and then to fill them with two different fillings. When I looked in my macaron book, I noticed that they suggested using Chinese five spice for both their gingerbread and pumpkin macarons. I decided to follow the recipe, substituting pumpkin pie spice for the Chinese 5 spice (though that may have been because I went to the trouble of buying the pumpkin pie spice…) So for those of you who are interested, I added 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice to the almond meal and powdered sugar. I also added a couple of drops of red and yellow food coloring because I wanted orange cookies.

Pumpkin Butter Buttercream

For this filling, I followed the directions for the apple butter buttercream recipe but swapped the apple butter with pumpkin butter and the cinnamon with pumpkin spice. The resulting frosting was very pumpkin spicey but tasted ok. The macarons with this filling taste a little like pumpkin pie. I do wonder if the effect would be heightened with a vanilla cookie instead of a pumpkin spice cookie.

As I was thinking about this project I started imagining other directions the cookie could be taken in. I wondered if you could make a pumpkin spice latte macaron. So I decided to make a pumpkin spice latte white chocolate ganache.

Pumpkin Spice Latte White Chocolate Ganache

I had a harder time finding a good recipe for this part of the cookie. I ultimately decided to use a couple of recipes I found for pumpkin spice lattes as the base of this recipe.

I pieced several different recipes together to make this recipe.

1/2 bag white chocolate chips

0.5 cup cream

2 tbsp ground coffee

1 tbsp pumpkin

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

Bring the cream to a boil. Add the coffee and steep for 10-15 minutes. Strain the mixture to remove some of the coffee. *This step was super hard but having some coffee in the mixture just adds texture and additional flavoring.* Bring the cream to a boil again. Whisk in the pumpkin, sugar, spice and vanilla. Pour the warm cream over the chocolate and set for 5-10 minutes. Mix the chocolate and cream together until the chocolate is fully melted. Let sit at room temperature or in the refrigerator stirring occasionally until it is a pipeable consistency.

I may have mentioned in my previous macaron post that macarons freeze spectacularly. I roll the cookies into “sleeeves” of plastic wrap and place the wrapped cookies into gallon size freezer bags. The cookies taste surprisingly fresh when stored this way. I even took these fragile cookies to my friend’s bridal shower in New Jersey from Arkansas packaged in this fashion.

A perfect fall treat!