Macarons & a Cupcake Flower Bouquet

To celebrate the anniversary of her godparents, one of my good friends wanted to gift them a cupcake bouquet and lots of macarons. I advised her right off the bat that the cupcake bouquet doesn't travel well and should be assembled right at the venue itself. She has enlisted the help of her godbro to do the assembly. Hahah. It's not too much work, just poking toothpicks into a styrofoam ball and arranging the cupcakes onto them. It does make one's fingers a little buttercream-y though, but that's not necessarily a bad thing!

Candy Cane Macarons

The cupcakes are chocolate, frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. I decorated them to look like flowers: chrysanthemums, roses & hydrangeas, using the same piping techniques as I used for my earlier cupcake bouquets. 

Chrysanthemum Cupcakes

Rose cupcakes

My favourite flower is always the hydrangea, one, because my favourite colour is blue, and two, because I love that neat effect of the white centre nestled among the individual flowers. Two-tone piping trick! Anyway, to hold the cupcakes in, I wrapped up a pot in nice purple paper, added a bow and then glued a styrofoam sphere onto it, so it's all ready for assembly. Hopefully the finished cupcake flower bouquet is assembled smoothly!

Hydrangea Cupcakes

Now, for the macarons, I made 5 flavours: candy cane, pistachio, lemon meringue, passion fruit and dark chocolate ganache. The colour of the white shells for the candy cane macarons is actually the natural colour of the batter, without any additional colour added. I filled them with peppermint French buttercream, and then added crushed candy canes along the outside. Crushing candy canes in a very humid environment isn't fun. They tend to goop up at the bottom of the mortar & pestle! But I love the additional texture that the candy cane adds to these macarons.

perfect for the festive season!

I was looking forward to making the pistachio cream filling for the pistachio macarons. I bought a small jar of pistachio spread and couldn't wait to sandwich that between two macaron shells. I swirled it with a little bit of French buttercream first so that the filling wouldn't be so heavy. 

filling the shells with Pistachio cream

I think this pistachio filling is my new favourite! It's got a nice nutty, pistachio flavour that doesn't fade into the background. Oh yes, I want to mention that it's always a good idea to coordinate the colour of the macaron shells with that of the filling, so people don't get a surprise when they bite into it. Like pink for raspberry or yellow for lemon. Of course, you could totally go out of the norm and make black macarons and fill them with rose buttercream or something. I'm not a big fan of the super dark macarons shells like black or red because it takes tons of food colouring to make such a deep colour. That's a lot of titanium dioxide, which is the main ingredient in food colouring!

Pistachio Macarons

The lemon meringue macarons were filled with lemon curd and vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, to balance out the tartness of the curd. Sorry about the poor lighting in the pic. The feet on these shells spread out a tad more than I liked them too. I figured it was because my oven temperature was too hot. 

Lemon Meringue Macarons

To make the filling for the passionfruit macarons, I made passionfruit curd using some passionfruit purée and half a dozen egg yolks and plopped that generously onto the centre of each macaron, filling the edges with vanilla French buttercream. I love using curds and French buttercream to fill macarons because it's a great way to use up all those egg yolks that inevitably gets leftover from the macaron-making process!

Passionfrut Macarons

Because my friend is a Winnie-the-Pooh lover, she just had to get some Winnie-the-Pooh macarons too! These macarons are filled with dark chocolate ganache. Their faces are drawn on using a black edible food marker, just like the previous times I've made Pooh macarons.

Winnie the Pooh macarons

Here are the macarons packed up in Ziplock bags to keep them fresh for the party. I hope my friend's godbro is able to put together the cupcake bouquet and everyone at the party enjoys the cupcakes and macarons. Will update this post to include a pic of the finished cupcake bouquet once my friend sends it to me. Thanks for reading & Happy Boxing Day!

Lemon, Passion Fruit, Pistachio & Candy Cane Macarons

Macarons for my friend's mum

Update: Here's the assembled cupcake bouquet, put together by my friend's husband and her mum! They did pretty well for their first time assembling! And the recipients of this cupcake bouquet loved it! :)

Cupcake Flower Bouquet