Year of the Ox Macarons

This was something that was in my mind that I couldn't put away until I have made it because of the compulsion it evokes. I was just musing over how people all over the world would love to receive some blessings during this pandemic chaos, at a time when the Year of the Rat draws to a close and the Year of the Ox is about to be ushered in. This was what I made! 

I pictured Little Brother Rat offering Big Brother Ox an early new year greeting by offering up teeny mandarin oranges in his tiny paws, wishing/hoping that Big Brother Ox would bring many blessings to everyone. And Big Bro carries a gold ingot on his back with the chinese character "blessings" on it, all fired up to bring blessings to everyone. 

A closer look at them! 

I used the Swiss meringue method to make the macarons. You may refer to this post for the recipe. 

Here is a picture of the piped batter. After baking it, I realised I would do better by baking Little Brother Rat as a separate macaron shell since there are just too many layers of batter with long waiting time if I did the Ox and Rat together as one macaron shell. Since I had some leftover batter, I redid the rats as seperate pieces from the Ox and they turned out much better. 

Piped batter! 

I decorated the baked shells with royal icing and black edible marker. 

I filled the macarons with dark chocolate ganache and mandarin orange yuzu curd. You may refer to this recipe for dark chocolate ganache. I will share the recipe for the curd in this blog post. 

Recipe for mandarin orange yuzu curd 

Ingredients:

45g unsalted butter

40g caster sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

65g fresh mandarin orange juice 

15g yuzu juice concentrate (without sugar added)

1 tbs mandarin orange zest (about 8-10g)

A pinch of salt

Steps:

1. Using electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and salt until light and fluffy.

2. Add egg and egg yolk a little at a time, beating well after each addition. 

3. Add orange juice and yuzu juice and mix until combined. Don’t worry if it starts to curdle.

4. Pour contents into a saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring continuously with a spatula.

5. Once the curd is able to coat the back of the wooden spoon, remove from heat.

6. Fold in orange zest. 

7. Press a cling wrap over surface of curd and let it cool before storing in fridge for up to a week and freezer for up to two months.

Here is a close up view of the filling. Pipe a ring of dark chocolate ganache before filling the middle with curd and sandwiching the top shell on. If you don't want the macaron shells to turn soggy too soon due to the high liquid content in the curd, you may coat the base of the top and bottom macaron shells with a thin layer of ganache first, which was what I did.

It was my intention to bring some blessings or at leaat put a smile on people's faces with this creation. I hope it did! 

With love, 

Phay Shing