Coconut and Pineapple Curd Macarons

These macarons have a soft smooth coconut buttercream and a cool tangy pineapple curd in the middle. It’s a bite of summer!

If you like these macarons, you may really like my Coconut and Pineapple Curd Cake!

Tools you’ll need

To make the shells you’ll need a mixer with a whisk attachment,  sifter, kitchen scale, baking pans with mats or parchment paper, oven thermometer, wilton tip number 12. For the curd you need a sauce pan and whisk, nothing crazy. The buttercream is made with regular kitchen tools too, nothing special.

For the macaron shells

For these you will need to make macaron shells. If this is the first time you’re making macarons I suggest you read through my whole post on my macaron shell recipe post. I’ll leave that link there for the shell recipe and we will get right into making the extra tasty parts, the coconut buttercream and pineapple curd!

I colored most of the batter with Americolor gel yellow and the tiniest bit of crimson just to change the shade a bit. Then sprinkled white nonpareils on top before they were baked. For half of the shells I put white batter on one side of the bag and yellow on the other to give a swirl effect.

For the buttercream

It’s such a small amount of buttercream, don’t bother pulling out your mixer, unless you feel like it! We only need enough to make circles around our shells. Put the softened butter in a bowl and whisk it around quickly until it seems lighter in color. Put the sugar in 1/2 cup at a time and mix it in with a spatula. My butter seemed extra soft and needed more sugar than anticipated. It will need 1/2 cup to 1 cup of sugar. Then add the extract and heavy cream and mix it together with a spatula until it’s the consistency that you like. I bagged mine up and used a number 12 tip to pipe my rings on my shells, though it’s not necessary, you can just cut the tip off a bag.

Make sure you have a substantial buttercream rim on these because the curd is a tad runny and will leak otherwise.

For the Pineapple Curd

I had left over pineapple curd from my coconut and pineapple curd cake. Which would be a great way to use up left overs! It’s difficult to make a smaller amount.

You’ll put all but the eggs in a sauce pan, turn it to medium low heat stirring until the sugar is totally dissolved. It does not need to get super hot, just warm enough to dissolve the sugar. Then in a separate bowl you’ll whisk your 2 eggs. You will temper the eggs by very slowly adding small amounts of the hot liquid while whisking. Once a little more than half of the mixture has been mixed and the egg mixture feels warm you can add it all to the sauce pan. Constantly whisk the mixture for 3-5 minutes until the mixture thickens, once it’s thickened remove it from the heat to let cool. Once cool store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator until ready to use.

If it got too warm too fast you may see some bits of cooked eggs. It’s not totally ruined just strain it. If there is a lot, you may want to try again.

When you fill them take your time because the curd is runny. I used a piping bag with a very small hole cut off the tip. A bottle may be good for controlling flow as well. Do not overfill these. Stay on the side of underfilling or it will get messy. Delicious, but messy.