Minnie Mouse Ribbon Vanilla Macarons (Reduced Sugar Shell and Filling, Template Provided)

I have a request for Minnie Mouse themed macarons. So here are some sweet pink polka dot ribbon macarons :)

Due to copyright issues, I could only make something that is related to Minnie Mouse but generic.

A request was made to make the macarons less sweet so I used the reduced sugar macaron shell recipe and reduced sugar vanilla swiss meringue buttercream recipe to make these. I actually made these ribbons along with elephant macarons, and Elsa and Olaf macarons but will just type out the full recipe of the shell for your convenience.

Here's a template for ribbons that you may print out to fit an A4 sheet. Please acknowledge the source here if you use it as I have taken time and effort to make this.

Reduced sugar macaron shell recipe
Ingredients (makes about 45-50 macarons, 90-100 shells):
Mass
210g superfine almond meal
196g icing sugar
11g rice flour
4g cornflour
1/8 tsp salt
White and pink gel food colouring
83g egg whites

Italian meringue
78g egg whites
196g castor sugar
73g water
1/8 tsp cream of tartar (optional)

Steps:
1. Prepare ribbon template and baking sheet on baking tray.

2. Prepare mass. Sift almond, icing sugar, rice flour, cornflour and salt together. Add egg whites and mix well to form a thick paste. Scoop out about 2 tbs of mass and colour it white. Colour the remaining portion pink.

3. Prepare Italian meringue. Heat caster sugar and water in a small saucepan until 115°C without stirring. In the mean time, beat egg whites with cream of tartar until soft peaks at medium low speed. Reduce speed if temperature of syrup is not reached yet. When syrup is ready, remove from heat, turn mixer speed to high and slowly pour syrup into egg whites in a thin stream, avoiding the beaters. Continue beating at high speed for 10-15 minutes or until cool, stiff and glossy. Portion about 1 tbs of meringue to stick baking sheet to baking tray. Use the formula weight of meringue = 0.51 x weight of mass to portion out the meringue for white and pink colours.

4. Macaronage. Fold meringue into masses in two additions. First addition is about a third. Please refer to this post for video tutorials of macaron basics such as how to fold the batter. You may refer to my macaron book too. The batter is ready when it falls off the spatula in a slow moving lava-like manner.

5. Transfer pink batter into piping bag fitted with 6 mm round piping tip. Pipe the ribbon by tracing the shape. Use a toothpick to pull batter in place wherever necessary. Bang tray in table to remove trapped air bubbles. Transfer white batter into piping bag fitted with 2mm piping tip. Pipe the dots while the pink batter is still wet. Bang tray again.

6. Dry the shells in aircon room and/or under a fan for about 2-3 hours (reduced sugar recipe tends to take longer to dry) or until dry to touch. You may use the regular macaron shell recipe without sugar reduction of you don't wish to wait for too long.

Piping ribbons 

7. Bake in preheated oven at 140°C for 10 minutes at lowest rack. Rotate the tray and bake at 130°C for 8 minutes. If the feet appear wet, reduce temperature to 120°C for another 5 minutes and check again. Cool completely before removing from tray.

Freshly baked!

Decorate the shells with pink royal icing. Outlining the ribbon with royal icing gives it some definition.

Fill the shells with reduced sugar vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream and refrigerate for at least 24h before serving.

With love,
Phay Shing