Mac Attack #18: Dark Chocolate-Espresso Macarons

I'm still obsessed with baking macarons.
And yes, I know, I still have not posted my basic recipe, but it just takes a lot of time, a lot of pictures, and so on. I will definitely try to post my version of the French Meringue method within the next two weeks....
Yesterday, the Mac Atttack challenge #18 ended (I would have posted it back then if I hadn't though that I have to post it on the 27th...).
It's my second challenge on Mac Attack, and it was quite a common theme: Chocolate. It was so common, I really didn't want to come up with something new, creative and crazy, so I took one of the two chocolate macarons recipes that I make a lot: Dark chocolate and Espresso macarons!

I started to love dark chocolate only about two years ago, same with coffee. But now I love both, especially, of course, when they are paired together! But again, I have to admit, I don't make macarons because I want to eat them, I make them because of the process of making them, because I want to give them away, hoping someone likes them, too! But of course, I eat them, too.

Nut-filled Coffee Cake & Homemade Almond Milk

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

Now, when I first read the task, I though it was a cake filled with something coffee flavoured. I'm not familiar with the term coffee cake, and it's also quite unusual to drink some afternoon coffee with a slice of cake, here.

I was a bit concerned about the meringue. I don't really like meringue, especially when it's not hard. It's a miracle, it seems some international recipes always need to make some meringues here, some baisers there; I feel this is rather unusual here.

But I was really looking forward to participate in that challenge, as I love working with yeast, even though often, my doughs just won't rise.
I was only making half of the dough!
Looking through the thread in the forum with the finished coffee cakes was great. It was a challenge where everyone came up with an individual filling.
Even though the though of a chocolate filling (I mean, when the chocolate is molten into the dough!) was very tempting, I decided not to do something with chocolate.
I had something else in mind which I wanted to try out since long ago. In Switzerland, it's a quite common kind of filling in storebought products, as in the "Nussgipfel" (croissant with nut filling) or "Nussschnäck" (looks quite like a cinnamon roll, but is also filled with nuts).
So, I was sure I wanted to do such a nut filling.