Spiced Pumpkin Cheesecake Macarons

Spiced Pumpkin Cheesecake Macarons are deliciously sweet and fragrant, loaded with pumpkin spice and with a tangy pumpkin cream cheese filling. All the components of a delicious spiced pumpkin cheesecake in a macaron!

Pumpkin season is upon us, and these spiced pumpkin cheesecake macarons make a dainty Autumn snack or elegant Halloween cookie. Baking homemade macarons can be daunting, and if this is your time, then be sure to read my step-by-step guide to making Italian macarons (with Italian meringue) first.

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Ingredients

Here is everything you will need to make these spiced pumpkin cheesecake macarons. The flavors and sweetness and perfectly balanced, as pumpkins are naturally sweet, so there's no need to add extra sugar to the pumpkin cheesecake filling.

For the pumpkin spice macaron shells

1. Egg whites: I prefer to buy eggs and separate them rather than use pre-packaged egg whites. I never get the same level of results from pre-packaged! Always use room-temperature eggs in baking.
2. Fine granulated sugar/caster sugar: I like to use golden sugar in fall macaron flavors; it just gives an added warmth that works really well in the season of pumpkins and apples and all things Autumn. But you can use either white or brown sugar!
3. Water: We dissolve the granulated sugar into the water before boiling it into a syrup so that it heats evenly.
4. Ground almonds: You can buy almond flour, almond meal, and ground almonds, and they are all slightly different. The best almonds for macarons is almond flour, as it is the finest in texture.
5. Powdered sugar/icing sugar: This is mixed with the ground almonds and egg whites to make the almond paste.
6. Ground cloves: To get our pumpkin spice flavor, we add the components of this delicious fall spice mix. Ground cloves have a very strong flavor, so you don't need much.
7. Ground nutmeg: Nutmeg has a more subtle taste, but if you miss it out, you will definitely notice!
8. Ground cinnamon: Cinnamon adds an unmistakable warmth to the macaron shells.
9. Ground ginger: We also add ground ginger to give extra warmth and a very slight bit of heat.
10. Orange food coloring: To achieve a pumpkin color, I use a small amount of food coloring for the macaron shells. Use powdered food coloring or gel food coloring for macarons, and not liquid. You can adjust the quantity as to your preference on how intense an orange color you like!

For the pumpkin cheesecake macaron filling

1. Pumpkin puree: Canned pumpkin puree is so handy for baking, but make sure you purchase pumpkin puree with nothing in it other than pumpkin.
2. Cream cheese: I try and buy organic cream cheese wherever possible as the water content is lower, making for thicker, richer cream cheese. The cream cheese gives a rich and smooth cheesecake tang, and the pumpkin pie spices in the macaron shells bring it all together perfectly.
3. Digestive biscuits/Graham crackers (optional): To get the taste and texture of a cheesecake base, I like to grind biscuits/cookies to a fine crumb and mix it into the spiced pumpkin cheesecake macaron filling. If you are not in the UK, use Graham Cracker crumbs.

See the recipe card at the bottom of this post for all the quantities.

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Instructions

There are a lot of instructions to make homemade macarons but trust me, it is worth reading them all through and really getting it straight in your mind before starting. Because even though the instructions are long, the time frame is short! So preparation is key.

1. Preheat the oven to 145 degrees Celsius / 295 Fahrenheit (no fan).
2. Prepare and weigh out the ingredients, separating the egg whites from egg yolks if necessary, taking extreme care not to get any yolk in the white. 
3. Make the almond paste by blending the ground almonds and powdered sugar together until they are a very fine consistency and completely combined. Sieve the mixture into a large mixing bowl and add the ground ginger, ground nutmeg, ground cloves, and ground cinnamon.
4. Mix the egg white and orange food coloring into the almond and pumpkin pie spice mixture firmly until it is fully incorporated. 
5. Make the Italian meringue by placing the water and granulated sugar into a saucepan. Gently warm the water and stir to dissolve the sugar. Once it has dissolved, turn up the heat, stop stirring, and place the sugar thermometer into the mixture. 
6. Once the thermometer starts to climb above 105 degrees Celsius/220 degrees Fahrenheit, whisk the egg whites until they go opaque and form soft peaks.
7. When the sugar syrup reaches a soft boil temperature of 115 degrees Celsius/240 degrees, start whisking the egg whites again to a stiff peak stage and then slowly pour in the sugar syrup a little at a time. The residual heat of the sugar will mean the temperature continues to go up even once you remove it from the heat, and it will be the required 120 degrees Celsius when you mix it into the egg white.
8. The Italian meringue will turn a smooth, glossy, and opaque white. Continue to whisk once all of the sugar syrup has been added to bring down the heat until you can touch the side of the bowl, and it feels warm but not hot. 
9. Now mix the Italian meringue into the almond paste in three stages. 
10. Firmly mix in the first third of the Italian meringue with a metal or wooden spoon to loosen the almond paste and fully combine the two mixtures. 
11. Fold in the remaining two-thirds one at a time using the softer spoon or spatula, being very gentle with the final third so as not to overmix the batter and make it too slack. You should be able to draw a figure of 8 in the batter, and it slowly fades rather than stays there or vanishes immediately.

How to bake macarons

1. Pipe the spiced pumpkin cheesecake macarons. Move the macaron batter to a piping bag. Tie a knot in the end and relax the mixture slightly in the bag with your hands for a few seconds. Cut half a centimeter from the tip of the piping bag. 
2. Position the piping bag perpendicular to the tray with the nozzle a few millimeters above the surface. Squeeze the bag without lifting it up for two or three seconds, then stop squeezing and make a little circle to twist it off. Fill the trays with lines of macaron shells, leaving a 2cm gap in between each macaron as they will spread slightly as they bake. 
3. Firmly smack it down onto the work surface twice to settle the Italian macaron batter and get rid of any air bubbles. You can use a toothpick to pop any other bubbles you see.
4. Bake the macarons for 17 minutes, then remove from the oven and allow the macarons to cool on the tray. This is a no-rest macaron recipe, but if you cannot fit all of your macarons in the oven at once, it won't harm the remaining macarons to be out on the worktop for 17 minutes. 

Pumpkin spice cheesecake macaron filling

1. Blend the biscuits/graham crackers to a fine crumb in a food processor, or crush them with a pestle and mortar.
2. Strain the cream cheese and the pumpkin puree through muslin to squeeze it out and remove any excess water, then mix the pumpkin puree and cream cheese together and stir in the crumbs.
3. Add the spiced pumpkin cheesecake macaron filling to a piping bag and pipe it onto one shell before sandwiching it together with another shell.
4. Leave the spiced pumpkin cheesecake macarons in the fridge to soften up and go chewy for a few hours before serving.

Hint: If the pumpkin cheesecake filling seems too slack to pipe, put it into the piping bag and then chill quickly in the freezer for 20 minutes.

FAQ

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Food safety

• Take care when boiling sugar, and do not leave it unattended.
• Wash hands, utensils, and surfaces after handling raw eggs.

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