'Graduating Potted Cacti' Chocolate Macarons and Chiffon Cupcakes

My friend had a rather unique request for graduation themed macaron/cupcake bake that incorporates plants for a friend who finally completed her ACCA. That's how this bunch of smiley potted cacti wearing graduation caps came about :)

The bake consists of macarons filled with dark chocolate ganache on top of chocolate chiffon cake covered with dark chocolate ganache and crushed oreo cookies. Even the little graduation hats are made of macarons!

I used the reduced sugar recipe for the macaron shells here. Both regular and reduced sugar recipes can be found here. You may refer to my Creative Baking: Macarons book for a systematic presentation of the basics and complex shaped macarons. You may refer to my video tutorials for macaron basics and piping of complex shapes on the blog too.

Just to share some pictures of the process...

Piping the cacti

Piping little squares for the hats

Decorated shells. Checkout the awesome feet!

See how tiny these hats are! I can't provide too much details here because the hats will appear in my upcoming Creative Baking: Macaron Basics book!

The macarons were filled with a firm dark chocolate ganache.

Please refer to this post on how I made the chocolate chiffon cupcakes. I used the exact same recipe.

The cupcakes were topped with a softer ganache than the macaron filling. I made about 120g of soft ganache, using a ratio of 1.5:1 for dark chocolate:cream. I added 30g of crushed oreos into the ganache and topped up the surface with more crushed oreos. This quantity is enough to fill about 18 cupcakes.

Coating the cupcakes with Oreo and dark chocolate ganache 

Thank God it was really well received in terms of looks and taste!

With love,
Phay Shing