Bright Macarons

On Friday, some of you may have seen my instgrams of the 80 macarons I was making for an Indian Henna Party. (Night before the wedding)

 

I was up at 7am and it took me until about 3pm to get them all done ! I actually have a blister on my little finger BUT I was really pleased with how they turned out and I hear they were scoffed quite quickly !

 

So I just thought I'd share a few more tips I found out following on from my Perfecting Macarons post.

 

I discovered that only sieving the almonds and icing sugar can result in lumpy tops ! So I sieved mine 3 times !

 

I also used my quantities from the first blog and did about 8 rounds ! I like doing this in case one batch didn't work for some reason. So it's a lot of cleaning but each time I weighed everything out, got the piping bag ready and the baking sheet cut for each of the trays. It definitely paid to be calm, do it slowly and be organised !

 

I also had the pleasure of meeting the amazing pastry chef Claire Clark recently and a good tip from her and available in her book is to add a pinch of cream of tarter to the meringue !

 

So here they are:

 

 

 

I love how they are traffic light colours !

 

Ohh so if you'd like to try the fillings here's the recipes:

 

Green:

 

Mint Chocolate Buttercream

 

140g butter

280g Icing Sugar

2 tbsp Milk

2 heaped tablespoons of cocoa powder (or enough to get the colour right)

3 tsp peppermint essence (do one at a time and taste)

 

I chop the room temperature butter up and pop in mixer. Slowly add icing sugar, mix well. Then add milk. Then flavouring / colouring.

 

Yellow:

 

Lemon Meringue Buttercream

 

140g butter

280g Icing Sugar

2 tbsp Milk

3 tsp Lemon essence (do one at a time and taste)

4 Mini Meringues Crumbled

 

 

Red:

 

Strawberry & White Chocolate Buttercream

 

140g butter

280g Icing Sugar

2 tbsp Milk

80g White chocolate melted

3 tsp Strawberry essense (do one at a time and taste)

 

I made some little signs so the guest knew what the flavours were !

I am sorry but I had to share this... hahaha ! What do they look like !

 

Sorry - haha !

 

SO many macarons !!

 

I had some lovely comments so good luck to those trying these and do let me know how you get on and share pictures !!!

 

I'm off for a cuppa and a dodgy left over macaron ! x