Mickey Mouse Gloves and Pants Macarons

I have a request for Mickey Mouse gloves and pants macarons along with Mickey and Minnie Mouse cookiepops. Here they are :)

Salted caramel (gloves) and strawberry (pants) flavoured!

I was told that these were promptly snatched up at the party! Thank God they were well received :).

Recipe for strawberry and caramel shells
Ingredients (makes about 20 macaron pants and 25 macaron gloves. I only made 15 of each and played with leftover batter):
200g ground almond (extra fine)
200g icing sugar
200g caster sugar
75ml water
160g egg whites, preferably aged, divide into one 80g and two 40g portions

5g red yeast powder*
2g beetroot powder*
1/8 tsp red powder food colouring*
1/8 tsp strawberry emulco
A few drops red gel food colouring
1/2 tsp white powder food colouring*
1/8 tsp caramel essence*

*Ingredients for food colouring/flavouring that can be omitted. Just use gel food colouring if you are unable to obtain red yeast and beetroot powder

Steps:
1. Sift together ground almond and icing sugar. Divide into two portions. Place glove and pants templates on baking tray and line with baking sheet. If the sheet does not lie flat on the tray, use a bit of Italian meringue to stick it down.

2. Dissolve beetroot powder in one 40g portion of egg whites. Add sifted red yeast and red powder colouring to one portion of ground almond mixture. Add egg white with beetroot into the almond mixture. Add strawberry emulco and mix well until a mass forms. Add drops of red gel colouring until desired dark shade of red is achieved.

3. Add sifted white powdered coloring to the other almond mixture. Add 40g of egg whites and caramel essence and mix well until a mass forms. You may use white gel colouring or omit the use of colouring.

4. Make the Italian meringue. Heat caster sugar and water in a small saucepan without stirring once the water boils. At the same time, beat 80g of egg whites at medium low speed with electric mixer until foamy. Do not beat the egg whites beyond soft peak stage. Reduce mixer speed if necessary. Boil syrup until temperature reaches 115°C. Remove from heat. Increase mixer speed to high and slowly pour syrup into the egg whites, avoiding the beaters. Keep beating on high speed for 10-12 minutes until meringue is cool, stiff and glossy. Divide the meringue into two equal portions.

5. Fold the meringue into the mass in two additions, leaving about 2 tbs of meringue unused for each batter. First addition is about 1/3 of the meringue to lighten up the batter before adding the rest. Work on one coloured batter and complete piping out before folding the meringue into the other mass. The consistency should be such that the batter flows in a slightly discontinuous manner off the spatula, I.e. under folded. Checkout my video tutorials for the macaronage process.

The masses and macaron batter

6. Transfer the batter into piping bag. I used a Wilton #12 round tip to pipe out the pants.

I used a Wilton #10 round tip to pipe the main part of the gloves, air-dry for 15 minutes before piping the base of the glove with #5 round tip.

Tap the tray hard on the table to release any trapped air bubbles after piping.

7. Dry the shells for 2 hours or until the surface is no longer sticky to touch in an air con room.

8. Bake the pants at 130-140°C for 17-22 minutes with the rack at second lowest position in the oven. Rotate the tray halfway through baking. Let the shells cool on the tray before attempting to remove them. The shells should lift off easily from baking sheet. If it is still stuck, it's under baked. Bake for another 5 minutes at 120-130°C before checking again. Repeat if necessary.

Freshly baked pants! Sounds funny, I know :p

Bake the gloves at 120-130°C for 17-22 minutes with the rack at the lowest position.

Freshly baked gloves!

9. Decorate the shells with edible black marker and yellow royal icing.

10. Fill the shells with strawberry swiss meringue buttercream (smbc)...

I doubled the amount of strawberry emulco used

... And salted caramel smbc with salted caramel at the center...

I omitted the earl grey.

Keep the assembled macarons in airtight container and refrigerated for at least 24 h before consuming.

All packed and ready to party!

I made cute Molang with some leftover white macaron batter. Do check out those! I made something else with leftover red batter to freeze for another party since macaron shells freeze well. Will post about that when the time comes!

With love,
Phay Shing

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Little Twin Stars Rose and Lavendar Macarons (notes about using edible markers on macaron shells)

These rose and lavendar Little Twin Stars are a product of leftover batter from my killer heels macaron bake :).

Looking sweet :)

Please refer to the killer heels bake for the shell and filling recipe. Just to share some pictures and important note about using edible markers for macarons.

Piping out the batter

I piped out the batter using Wilton #10 tip for the boy and a combination of #8 and #10 for the girl. I used a toothpick to pull the batter for the hair sticking out.

Leave out the hair detail for bottom shells.

Freshly baked and paired

Using flesh coloured royal icing for the face. 

Dry the flesh coloured icing completely, preferably overnight before adding in the eyes and mouth using charcoal/ black gel coloured royal icing.

I made a mistake of not drying the icing overnight, and then using edible marker on the icing. While edible markers do well directly on macaron shells, they tend to run when used on icing after storing in the fridge due to condensation on the icing.

Filling with rose swiss meringue buttercream

Filling with lavendar smbc

Slightly smudged look on the boy as the marker drawings started to run after assembly and storage

The marker drawings smudged and ran even more with time (too ugly to post here :p) so please do use royal icing to add any details on iced parts!

With love,
Phay Shing

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Pink & Blue Care Bears Rose and Lavendar Macarons

These overly-chubby Care Bears are a product of leftover macaron batter from my killer heels bake!

Rose and lavendar flavoured

Hubby always griped about the lack of cheeks on Care Bears nowadays, as compared to the original ones back in the '80s when we were kids. With that in mind, I accidentally gave these beary macarons too much cheek!

Please refer to the recipe from my killer heels bake for these macarons (shells and filling). I used a combination of Wilton #8 and #10 tip to pipe the bear face, and toothpick to pull out the hair strands. Omit the hair for the bottom shell.

Freshly piped!

Freshly baked and paired!

Freshly iced/drawn on features with royal icing and edible marker.

Filling up with rose swiss meringue buttercream

Filling up with lavendar smbc

Hubby wanted one blue bear reserved for him as it's one of his childhood favorites and is more than happy to have a pink one too :). He finds them so irresistibly cute!

With lots of love,
Phay Shing

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'Killer Heels' Rose and Lavendar Macarons (minimal artificial coloring)

Lavendar scented blue heels and rose scented pink heels with naturally coloured and flavoured floral swiss meringue buttercream (smbc)! Yes, these are macarons! Probably the first high heels version because when I did a search for high heels or killer heels macarons on the internet, I couldn't find any...and I can understand why...

Not only are these footwear "killer" for the feet, they were also a killer to pipe! I was risking making macarons with no feet so I was thankful that any appeared on the macs at all. These dainty footwear wannabes are for a young lady's 6th birthday.

What's new about this batch is I made use of blue pea flower to colour the batter for blue shells and buttercream, and made use of natural sources to flavour and colour as far as possible. Beetroot powder was used to colour the rose buttercream. I used dried lavendar and rose flowers to impart the flavours instead of using floral extracts or rosewater, which most of the recipes from the internet suggest. The result is still very fragrant! Hubby remarked that the rose ones taste like Bandung!

This is how I coloured the macaron batter with blue pea flower....

Soak about 20 dried flowers in about 42g of egg whites for an hour and remove the flowers

You may skip this unorthodox way of colouring the macaron shell if you prefer to colour the water used for the Italian meringue. I was lazy to prepare a separate batch of Italian meringue for pink coloured shells :p. It's another 15 minutes or so of extra work plus extra washing up to do (I only have one stand mixer), which I wasn't willing to do. Because of my laziness, I came up with this unorthodox way of colouring a portion of egg whites.

The shells were flavoured by using icing sugar that has been stored with dried rose or lavendar for a month. The aroma is pretty strong!

Dried rosebuds and lavendar with icing sugar in glass jars.

Update 20/8/2015: do check out my video tutorial for macaronage and testing of batter consistency!

Rose and lavendar macaron shells
Ingredients (makes about 50-55high heel-shaped macarons or 100-110 shells):
200g superfine ground almond/almond meal, divide into 2 portions
100g rose icing sugar*
100g lavendar icing sugar*
200g caster sugar
75ml water
162g egg whites, separate into 80g, 40g and  42g portions, preferably aged
1 tsp Queen's natural sourced pink powder coloring (optional)
20 dried blue pea flowers (optional)
A drop of pink and blue gel food coloring

* use regular icing sugar if you don't have the time to store the icing sugar with dried lavendar or rose for at least a week. Use about 1 tbs of dried lavendar to about 125g of sugar and 30 rosebuds to 125g of icing sugar.

Steps:
1. Place high heels template under baking sheet on baking trays. I printed my own on A4 paper. Steep the blue pea flowers in 42g of egg whites for an hour (optional if you don't have blue pea flowers). Remove the flowers. Sift together almond and icing sugar in two separate large bowls, one for each flavour. Add 40g of egg whites to each portion and mix well to form the mass. Add a drop of food coloring and mix well.

Blue pea flower colored mass. Still dull colored so a drop of artificial blue is needed.

2. Prepare the Italian meringue. Place the caster sugar and water in a small saucepan and heat it over medium heat. Do not stir once all sugar has dissolved. At the same time, beat 80g of egg whites in a clean metal bowl at medium-low speed with electric mixer. Do not beat beyond soft peak stage. Slow down mixer speed if necessary. Once syrup reaches 115°C, remove from heat and turn up mixer speed to high. Slowly pour syrup into egg whites, avoiding the beaters. Continue beating for another 10-12 minutes until the meringue is stiff, glossy and cool.

3. Fold the meringue into the masses in two additions. Work on one batter (complete piping) before the other. The Italian meringue is very stable and can be left out sitting on the counter for a long time. Use a fold and press motion to fold in the meringue until just combined and falls off the spatula slowly but in a discontinuous manner. Usually you should fold until the batter is just able to fall off the spatula in a continuous manner. But for these heels, the batter should be under folded. Do watch a video demo of this macaronage process to have a better idea of consistencies.

The masses, italuan meringue and macaron batter. The masses are actually not so neon colored as seen in the photo.

4. Transfer about 4 tbs of batter into piping bag fitted with a Wilton #8 tip and the rest into a piping bag fitted with a Wilton #10 tip. Use the bigger tip to pipe the bigger portion of the heel, and the smaller tip to pipe the long stick. Use a toothpick to pull the batter to fill the edges.

Tap the tray to release trapped air bubbles.

5. Dry the shells in oven at 60°C fan mode or dry in air con room for 2 hours or until the shells are dry to touch. I used air con drying as I had other macarons to pipe and koda to look after as well.

6. Preheat oven to 130°C with the rack at the bottom level. Bake for 18-20 minutes, rotating the tray halfway through baking. Bake for a longer time at 120°C if the shells appear to be browning but doesn't look dry yet at the base.

Freshly baked! Small feet but definitely there!

Let the shells cool on the tray for at least 5 minutes before attempting to remove from tray.

Just as a comparison, checkout these plain round macarons that I made with leftover batter...

Much nicer feet on simple rounds!

As I mentioned before, the more an object deviates from the circle shape, the higher the risk of "overfolding" when piping out the batter.

Decorate the heels with royal icing and some cupcake sprinkles. I used black edible marker to add in the black portions of the heels.

Let the icing dry completely before filling.

Naturally coloured lavendar and rose smbc
Ingredients:
200g plain smbc^^, divide into 2 portions
70g milk
15-18 dried rosebuds
1 tsp beetroot powder**
1 tsp dried lavendar
1 tsp dried blue pea flower**

^^ recipe for smbc can be found here. Omit the vanilla extract and lemon if you wish.
** replace with gel food coloring or omit if you wish.

Steps:
1. Place lavendar and blue pea flower in one small bowl, and rosebuds and beetroot powder in another. Heat up the milk and pour about 35g of milk in each bowl. Steep the flowers in it for about half an hour.

No artificial colouring added!

2. Stir the milk in the bowls and strain out the flowers, squeezing as much milk out as possible.

3. Add 12g of lavendar milk to one portion of smbc and 14g of rose milk to the other portion. Add in about 2g at a time, mixing well with a spatula or whisk before adding more. Don't add in all at once or it will be hard to incorporate.

Naturally colored blue and pink floral smbc

Fill up the macaron shells with the respective smbc.

Refrigerate assembled shells for at least 24h before consuming.

All packed!

Of course I couldn't resist the chance to play with leftover batter :). I didn't simply pipe circles. I ran out of templates that's why I made those. Keep a lookout for cute Care Bears and Little Twin Stars macarons!

With love,
Phay Shing

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Angry Bird and Ladybug Macarons

I had some leftover macaron batter after making Elmo macarons. Here's what I did with the leftovers :)

Red Angry Bird and ladybug!

I made a template as shown below...

I portioned out a bit of the red batter (about 2 tbs) and added charcoal powder (1/3 tsp) to create the black batter. A 5-6 mm tip was used for piping the rounds and a 3mm tip was used to pipe the finer features. Angry bird's tail was painted on using a toothpick as it's too fine to be piped.

Before and after baking the shells.

Pairing up freshly baked shells

Freshly iced with royal icing along with extra Elmos!

Filling with chocolate ganache and strawberry swiss meringue buttercream!

A friend's kids and my kids got to enjoy these extra macarons!

With love,
Phay Shing

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Elmo Red Yeast and Beetroot Macarons with Chocolate Ganache (update for baking/piping techniques)

I have a request for Elmo macarons with chocolate ganache so here they are :)

"Elmo song" kept ringing in my head as I made these!

In order to reduce the amount of artificial red colouring needed, I used two types of natural food colouring to achieve this. I did a brief search on the Internet for beetroot powder or red yeast powder based macaron recipes and find that the resulting macarons are a very dull reddish brown, so some artificial colouring is still needed to make a bright but deep shade of red. I experimented with using fairly small amounts here but sufficient to significantly reduce the amount of artificial colouring used :). Susanne also reported that using too much red yeast causes her chiffon batter to bubble and deflate a bit so I didn't dare to use too much.

Recipe for red macaron shell 
Ingredients (makes 42-46 macarons, 84-92 shells depending on size):
200g almond meal/ ground almond (preferably superfine)
200g icing sugar
10g red yeast powder*
5g beetroot powder*
1/4 tsp red powder food colouring*
Approximately 20 drops of red gel colouring*
200g caster sugar
75ml water
160g egg whites, divided into 2 equal portions (preferably aged overnight or a few days)

*You may replace all of the food colour source with red gel colouring if you don't have any of the above items. Beetroot and red yeast tend to give a brownish tinge to the macarons and deepen the shade of red.

Steps:
1. Sift together almond, icing sugar, red yeast powder and red color powder.

As you can see, the colour is quite dull. This photo was taken before 1/4 tsp of red powder was added.

2. Dissolve beetroot powder in 80g of egg white and add the egg mixture to the flour mixture in step 1 to form the mass. Add red gel food coloring. I counted about 12 drops of gel colouring but subsequently added more during the macaronage (not advisable for newbies!!) as the shade was not "red" enough.

3. Prepare the Italian meringue. Boil caster sugar and water over medium heat without stirring while beating the remaining egg whites in a clean metal bowl at medium-low speed. When the syrup temperature reaches 115°C, increase the mixer speed to high and gradually pour the syrup into the egg whites, taking care to avoid the beaters. It is important to make sure that the egg whites are not beaten past soft peak stage before syrup is poured in. Otherwise the meringue will be too stiff and difficult to incorporate into the mass. Continue beating on high for 10-12 minutes until the meringue is cool and firm/ stiff peaks form.

4. Fold the meringue into the mass in two additions. Use a fold and press motion until batter just begins to fall off the spatula in a continuous manner. Do watch a video demo many times to have a good feel of the consistency of the batter and folding technique. I have not gone for any macaron classes before so this is how I learn.

Top: batter after first addition of meringue. Bottom: batter after macaronage is completed.

5. Transfer the batter into a piping bag fitted with a 5-6mm round tip and a bit of batter into another bag fitted with a 3mm tip. Pipe out ovals for bottom shell and Elmo's shape for top shell. Use a template under the baking sheet! Pipe oval for Elmo's head using the big tip, followed by two circles at the top for his eyes using the smaller tip. Use a toothpick to pull out the sides of his face to make the fuzzy edges. Remember that the batter will spread a little after piping so don't fill up your template completely. You can skip all these detailing and simply pipe round circles if you wish but don't you think he looks more endearing when you pay attention to the details? ;) Remember to tap the tray a few times to release air bubbles after piping.

Top and bottom shells. Photo for top shell is freshly piped whereas photo for bottom shell is somewhat dry and almost ready for baking

6. Dry the shells either using the oven at 60°C fan mode or in air con room in hot and humid Singapore. I have mentioned that oven drying is much faster but I find that if you are not careful with watching the drying time or process, the shells may be too dry and the feet won't be as nice on the baked shells. The surface of the shells may not be as smooth as air con drying too. So I settled for about 7-8 minutes of oven drying followed by air con drying until the shell surface is no longer tacky to touch, baking as soon as I can. As a result the feet in this batch are one of the best I achieved so far. Total drying time can vary from 30-60 minutes when using a combination of oven and aircon drying like I did. Don't use time as a gauge but instead use your fingers :)

7. Bake at 130°C with oven rack at lowest position for 17-22 minutes. Let the shells cool for 5 minutes before removing from tray. If the shells are still stuck on baking sheet, put them back in the oven to bake for a few minutes. Rotate your tray halfway through baking if your oven temperature is uneven.

Freshly baked and paired! Looks a bit like crabs hehe...

8. Decorate the shells with royal icing. I iced circles on a baking sheet and dried them for Elmo's eyes.

 I just stuck the pre-iced eyes onto the macaron shells with a dab of royal icing. Use a mixture of orange, yellow and teeny toothpick dip of teal to create Elmo's nose colour. I used charcoal powder to colour the icing black. Let the icing dry completely before storing in airtight container if you are not filling them yet. You may oven dry at 60°C fan mode to speed things up. Do use toothpicks to paint or nudge the icing along for very fine lines.

Freshly iced!

Recipe for chocolate ganache
Ingredients:
150g milk or dark chocolate, very finely chopped
8g butter, cut to small pieces
105g whipping cream

Steps:
1. Place chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl. Boil the cream.

2. Pour boiling cream onto chocolate and use a spatula to stir the mixture in one direction until all chocolate has melted.

3. Let the ganache rest at room temperature and firm up for 1-2 hours before piping onto the shells.

Filling up Elmo!

Just assembled!

4. Refrigerate at least 24h in airtight container before consuming. These can keep for a week plus.

All packed!

As usual, I couldn't resist the chance to play with leftover batter so keep a lookout for Angry Bird and ladybug macs in my future post!

With love,
Phay Shing

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