Irish Cream (Baileys) Macarons

I've finally gotten around to making Irish Cream (Baileys) macarons!

The ganache took a little experimenting - it's essentially a white chocolate ganache with irish cream in it, but I wanted to put as much irish cream in to have an intense flavour but still have the right consistency. 

Lamington Macarons

This weekend, I was looking through my pantry to see if I could be inspired to make a batch of macarons. Eventually, I found a bag of shredded coconut buried behind my cans of tomatoes and chipotle chillies and remembered why I had bought it - to make lamington macarons!

Given that half of the visitors to this blog aren't from Australia, if you're wondering what a lamington is, see here. It's essentially a lump of sponge cake sandwiched with jam, rolled in runny chocolate icing and covered with coconut.

Ariadne's Very Hungry Caterpillar

Excuse my absence - my house burnt down so I've been a little pre-occupied and haven't been in the mood to make macarons or had an oven to use to make them! I've come out of hiding, however, for my goddaughter's first birthday today. I was a little worried about making macarons for the first time in a new oven (especially a fully automatic brand new one), but thankfully it all went ok.

My goddaughter, Ariadne, turned one today. For her birthday party, I decided to make a Very Hungry Caterpillar out of macarons (for those of you who don't know who the Very Hungry Caterpillar is, see here). I initially got the idea from the Project Denneler blog - theirs was made from macarons laid out flat on a plate. For mine, I decided to skewer them like a macaron tower onto some polystyrene instead.