Macaron cake for Monie and Pandan Macarons for Karen...

My friend Mona had her last day at work yesterday before moving interstate to a new job. I made this macaron cake for her farewell afternoon tea.

For the cake, any chocolate cake recipe will do - an easy one is Martha Stewart's Devil's Food Cake, and you can find the recipe here.

I sandwiched the cake with a chocolate cream (whipped cream with Dutched cocoa and some sugar), then covered it with dark chocolate ganache (equal parts dark chocolate and cream).

For the shells, I just made one batch of the generic macaron recipe and divided it into bowls with food colouring - you can be smart with colours and add blue to pink once you've piped some pink ones to make purple, and add red to yellow to make orange, etc. Arrange the macaron shells on the cake whilst the ganache is still soft.

One of my other friends, Karen, had a baby last week and has been having cravings for pandan macarons for weeks.

For the shells, stick with the Generic Macaron Recipe here. Add green colouring to the mixture. If you have some shredded coconut handy, sprinkle some onto the shells before resting (unfortunately I couldn't find any in my pantry!)

For the filling, I cheated by using pandan essence which I bought from an Asian grocery store on Victoria Street in Richmond. You could probably use real pandan leaves and infuse some cream and make ganache from that.

I added the pandan essence to white chocolate ganache, and I'm told that they definitely tasted of pandan!

Greek Easter Macarons...

These macarons were inspired by the brightly coloured red dyed eggs that my Mother-in-law dropped off last night for Greek Easter.

The big question was: what ganache flavour to fill the red macaron shells with. I decided to go with Turkish Delight.

For the shells, refer to the generic macaron recipe here. I was a little disturbed by the amount of red and pink food dye I had to add to get the colour I was after, but at least they weren't going to be consumed by any young children!

For the filling, heat 100g of cream until almost boiling. Pour over 150g of milk chocolate. Stir through 1-2 teaspoons of rosewater and 1-2 teaspoons of orange blossom water (to taste). If you add more of the fragranced waters, you may need to increase your chocolate to ensure that the ganache sets.

Happy Easter Bunny Macarons!

These have been done by others before me, but I thought I'd make some with my own twist.

To get the bunny shape, I printed some bunny templates that were simple enough to pipe out.

To make them look more like bunnies, I used a skewer and some black food dye and painted on some eyes and a nose (I attempted some whiskers on some but it was a little over the top)

Because I made them grey (this has been questioned by many who have eaten them), I added some sprinkles on the ears to add some colour.

They took the same amount of time to bake as usual (13 mins)

And I sandwiched them with banana marshmallow ganache and packaged them in cellophane bags as an alternative to easter eggs this year...

Butter Popcorn with Salted Caramel Macarons for Timmy...

These were to reward Timmy for doing a week's worth of on-call for me...well worth the effort, I think!

To make the macarons, follow the salted caramel macaron recipe here.