Filled Cappuccino Balls

1. Sift the almond flour and powdered sugar into a bowl and mix. Beat the egg whites until stiff. When it starts to set, slowly pour in the sugar in several steps. When it is used up, keep beating the egg whites until it shines and the stirring hooks leave a solid pattern. Then add it to the flour mixture and fold in until a thick mixture is formed. This cannot be compared with the batter for macarons, because it is much more compact and the end product is not as fragile.
2. 2 Line trays (or 1 tray and a solid base) with baking paper. Now divide the dough into 2 equal halves. Thoroughly stir in the espresso in one and color the other with the white (this will later represent the hood). Then pour both doughs into a piping bag with an approx. 8 mm opening and spray approx. 20 x 3.5 – 4 cm dots onto each tray. With the white ones, the small tip that is created should remain, which is then sprinkled with a little espresso powder. With the brown dots of espresso dough, the tip must be smoothed with a wet spoon. When sprinkling the two doughs, make sure that they have the same number of dots, because they will be put together later. Then let the blanks rest at room temperature until the oven has heated up to 180 °. Then bake the trays one after the other. The baking time is 15-18 minutes. Then, including the paper, allow to cool on a wire rack. The macaroons should be firm on the outside but soft on the inside.

Filling:

1. Dissolve the espresso powder in the hot water, let it cool down a bit and then mix it with the vanilla flavor and starch. Bring the milk with the sugar to the boil and stir in the espresso mixture. Reduce the heat a little and let everything simmer while stirring until the starch binds and the mixture has become pudding-like. Then – for faster cooling – spread out a little on a large, flat plate and cover tightly with cling film so that no skin forms.
2. Beat the butter with the powdered sugar until creamy and then gradually stir in the pudding until a smooth cream is formed. Fill this into a piping bag with a 5 mm opening, close it and let it cool for about 15 minutes.

Completion:

1. Meanwhile, remove the brown espresso hemispheres from the paper and turn them over. Then sprinkle a layer of espresso cream on each and place the white half on top. They taste best if they can sit through at least one day (or overnight) after they have been put together ……… if that works … ;-)))
2. The amount of dough mentioned above resulted in 20 white and 20 brown halves, i.e. 20 balls in total.