Pâtisserie Nadine: Sri Lanka Black Tea Macarons with Lemon Ganache

For the Sri Lankan New Year's Party this year, I wanted to do something different and yet typical. When I last made the macarons in Easter Egg shape, it occurred to me that the shape of the island of Sri Lanka actually looks a bit like an egg and that more precise contours couldn't be much harder to do than, say, the bear macarons, so I just tried it! Sri Lanka (Ceylon), is the home of black tea among other things, so I thought of macarons with black tea and a white lemon ganache as filling. Of course, I was not the first person to make tea macarons, so I knew that it works and even looks very nice with the small black dots :-)
I also thought it was a good idea to make the macaron filling with a custard from the remaining egg yolks and some honey, as this video describes, I'll try that next time! A dark chocolate ganache would fit well, too, but I was not sure if that wouldn't overpower the lemon...
Ingredients:

90 grams egg whites (about 3 eggs)

50g sugar
200g icing sugar
110g almonds
2 tablespoons ground black tea (PG Tips)

100 g whipping cream
200 g white chocolate
3 tablespoons lemon juice
peel of 1 organic lemon

Preparation:
Print the template, you also need a mirrored version, such that you can assemble the macarons in pairs. I glued the two printed pages together so that they exactly fit on a baking tray.

Thus, I was able to slide the template under the baking paper, which was folded to the right size, and quickly distribute the macarons on the four baking sheets with a single template.

Grind the black tea to an even finer consistency, mix almonds and icing sugar.

Whip the egg whites until stiff, add the sugar and beat to stiff merengue.

Because my icing sugar was a little lumpy, I used a sieve this time to add the almonds and powdered sugar to the egg whites.

Fold in with a spatula, and work the dough until it is shiny and has the right consistency, rather thick!

Fill the first half of the macaron mass into a piping bag with a large round hole and pipe macarons onto the baking paper, using the template. For me it worked best to just about fill the contour with the piping bag and then push it with a spatula to the exact shape!

Repeat with the second half of the dough, you need a total of 4 baking sheets.

Let the macarons dry at least 20 minutes, until a soft skin has formed over them.

Bake the macarons for 16 minutes at 150°C conventional heat or 130°C convection, I had 2 trays in the oven with 130°C convection and my first tray dried for 50 minutes, because it took a while until I had all the macarons piped on the baking paper. The macarons are done when they are no longer wobbly when you press down on them lightly, and can be easily detached from the baking paper.