Connor's 1st Month Party Giveaway Boxes - part II: Macaron Madness & Cookies!

Continuing the post on Connor's 1st Month giveways, here are the details on the macarons. There were 6 different flavours for the macarons: lemon meringue, dark chocolate ganache, smoked salted caramel, passionfruit curd and mango-lime curd. I really wanted a variety of colours to display at the party, and here's a preview of a few the macarons that came out of the 360 macaron cookies-baking marathon!! I just love the rainbow colours!

Rainbow macaron platter!

The macarons shells were made using the French method. The yellow lemon meringue macarons were filled with tart lemon curd, balanced with a light vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. I like the sourness of the lemon because it cuts through the sweetness of the macaron.

Lemon Curd with Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Lemon Meringue Macarons

The dark blue smoked salted caramel macarons were made using Oak smoked sea salt. I love that smoky aroma, which goes well with the subtle richness of dark caramel, finished off with a crunch of sea salt. Salted caramel is really easy to make. Just stir sugar in a pot until it gets to a dark amber colour, then add the coarse sea salt, cream & butter. Bring it to 108C to get it to the proper consistency, and then cool it down at room temperature until it is of a pipeable consistency.

Smoked Salted Caramel Macarons

Some of the orange shells were filled with passionfruit curd and vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. I used 6 egg yolks, concentrated passionfruit juice and some gelatin to make this curd. I love passionfruit, so this was one of my favourites. 

Passionfruit & Mango-Lime Macarons

The rest of the orange shells were filled with a mango-lime curd. Curds are great to fill macarons with because they're a great way to use up all those egg yolks that inevitably come out of the macaron-making process, since only the egg whites are required to make the macaron shells. I ended up with 8 dozen egg yolks from making the macarons & all that Swiss meringue buttercream!!! Anyway, a whole 15-ounce ripe mango and 2 limes were used, along with 6 egg yolks, to make the mango-lime curd. 

Dark chocolate ganache filling

The light blue, pink and white shells were filled with dark chocolate ganache. I used a 1:2 ratio of cream to dark chocolate, by weight, to get a ganache that sets up nicely. Bring the cream just to a boil in a pot. Remove it from the heat and add the chopped up dark chocolate. Let it sit for 5 mins so that the chocolate melts, and then stir the chocolate and cream until it's well-mixed. Let the ganache cool to room temperature, and then refrigerate it overnight. It's best to make ganache a day ahead of when you need to use it so it has time to properly set up.

Dark Chocolate Ganache Macarons

Each guests received 2 macarons per box, so I hope they got to try the other flavours at the party! Here's the small goodies table set up at Connor's 1st month party. I did up the "chalkboard-style" poster as well. 

Small Dessert Table

Last but not least, there were sugar cookies served at the party: Little lamb and baby bottle sugar cookies, decorated with royal icing. For the baby bottles, I used 15 second icing to outline and flood the cookies, and 10 second icing for lines. 

Baby Bottle Sugar Cookies

For the little lambs, I filled in their faces and legs first using 15 second icing. For their fur, I used a stiff icing and piped it on using a Wilton star tip no. 24. You can use any size star tip really. The important thing is the icing's consistency. It must be stiff enough be able to stand as a stiff peak after you beat it in the mixer. If not, the icing will run into itself and you will lose the details of the fur. The little lambs have a blue fondant ribbon accent, which I made using a silicone mould. Troublesome, but great for consistency. 

Little Lamb Cookies

After a production-line assembly getting the 2 red eggs, 2 mini ang ku kuehs, 2 macarons and 2 cupcakes into the nice teal boxes, securing the boxes with fancy baby-themed ribbon and attaching the customized announcement card, all 100 of baby Connor's giveaway boxes for his 1st month celebration were ready! So happy to have completed it all. What a fun week of baking!!

1st Month Giveaway Boxes

Happy 1st Month, baby Connor!