earl grey macarons

A couple of weekends ago, I met up with my besties Sue and Cecila for a girls day, which included an afternoon tea lunch, shopping, and lounging at the spa.  I wanted to make something for us to snack on, and since I've been experimenting with tea-flavored ice creams lately, I thought tea-flavored macarons would be perfect!

I decided to make earl grey macarons, along with another batch of the lemon macarons that I made earlier this month.  For the earl grey macarons, I sprinkled a bit of minced earl grey tea on the tops of the shells, and made an earl grey brown-butter cream cheese filling to go inside.

I could barely taste the earl grey in the filling though (I had added a few teaspoons of concentrated earl grey tea, which I had steeped with one tea bag and a couple of tablespoons of boiling water), so I decided to add a bit of the minced steeped leaves into the filling as well.  That seemed to help add a bit more earl grey flavor, but it still was very faint.

We ended up having a fun and relaxing day out.  There were a lot of leftover macarons though - good thing I brought ziplock baggies so that the girls could bring them home!