Macaron tower for a circus themed first birthday

Some of you will remember the last time I made a macaron tower was for a baby shower...well, said baby is now a year old so it was time to get the macaron tower out again!

This macaron tower didn't have a flavour theme like last time (lolly bag) but rather a colour theme to match with the circus theme of the party.

They're basically as colourful as I could make them, with one layer of "swirly" red and white macarons which I'll show you separately. The flavours were varying (and nothing I haven't already posted about on this blog) - redskin, snickers, strawberry, Turkish delight and passionfruit.

Now about those swirly macarons... I've never attempted this before but essentially I coloured half the batter red and placed two piping bags into one large one with the nozzle. 

It didn't go completely to plan with some of the red leaking out before I started piping but after a few squirts they were coming out like this:

I can't finish this post without showing you the amazing circus cake that my sister made (chocolate mud all the way through):

Chinese New Year Macarons

My favourite part of Chinese New Year as a kid were those hard, chewy-centered strawberry flavoured lollies that looked like red packets.

I used to eat them by the bucket full but these days I can barely get through one!

These macarons are inspired by those lollies - the flavour is strawberry and the gold Chinese characters painted on the red shells represent the shiny red and gold packaging.

After I finished writing the characters on, my mother messaged me to tell me that I used the wrong character for prosperity...but I hope no one will mind once they take a bite!

For the recipe, I used the strawberry macaron recipe here but used red food colouring instead of pink. The gold writing is done using edible gold lacquer.

Happy New Year of the horse, everyone.