Wednesday 11 March 2015

Peppa Pig & Friends Assorted Macarons

This is the set of Peppa Pig and friends assorted macarons that started my macaron mania!

Pedro Pony, Suzy Sheep, Candy Cat and Peppa Pig!

A peek at the side view!

I must admit that I was quite harried making so many different flavours and designs in one session as it's my first time doing so. I have always worked with one single batter and perhaps with another small portion of different coloured batter which can be safely overfolded. These 4 designs are not the only ones I made. I also made Garfield, My Melody, Miffy and Rilakkuma so you can imagine I was in a muddle after a while!

I made the following flavours for the various characters, with special notes for adaptation of recipe:

Peppa: Strawberry shell with strawberry swiss meringue buttercream (smbc). Check out My Melody macarons for the recipe. I used less pink gel food colouring for a lighter shade and more for the darker shade for the cheeks. I prepared the light and dark pink batters separately as I was making My Melody as well. You may just prepare a light pink batter, then portion out 2 tbs of batter to colour it dark pink for the cheeks. You may overfold this part.

Suzy: Plain shell with lemon smbc and lemon curd filling. Please refer to my panda macarons for the recipe. Some light pink batter from Peppa was used for the cheeks.

Candy: Caramel shell with Earl Grey salted caramel smbc and Earl Grey salted caramel filling. Recipe is the same as Garfield macarons. Portion out 2 tbs of batter and colour it dark orange for the cheeks.

Pedro: Chocolate shell with cookies n cream smbc. Recipe is adapted from Mickey and Minnie macarons. Omit the charcoal powder. Portion out 2 tbs of batter and add white gel food colouring to lighten up the shade of brown for the spots. If you don't have white colouring, you may add on the spots with royal icing after baking.

It takes quite a bit of careful planning to portion out the various batters and laying out the templates. I took care to print out a mirror image of the character for the bottom shells instead of the circles. I maxed out all my baking trays for this project. A 5-6 mm piping tip was used to pipe big features and a 3mm tip was used to pipe smaller features like cheeks, spots and ears. A toothpick was used to pull the batter where necessary (like Candy's ears and spots on Pedro).

Just to share some pictures of works-in-progress...

The masses with different flavours

Portioning out the Italian meringue by weight

Macaronage! Often the trickiest part of macaron making

Piping out Suzy

Freshly baked and paired (top and bottom shell)

Features freshly iced with royal icing!

Filling up the macs!

All packed!

It took me a day to bake the shells, a day to ice the shells (including those made with extra batter not shown in this post) and half a day to fill and pack the macarons. I made all the fillings ahead of time which I kept in the freezer. Lots of work but it is satisfying to see the results of my labour :).

Thank God that these macs were well received in taste and looks!

With love,
Phay Shing





10 comments:

  1. I am interested in orderinG. May i know how u charge? My contact 90911329.

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    Replies
    1. Could you email us instead? The email address can be found on our blog. Thanks :)

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  2. Hi Phay Shing, I tried to make Pedro macs by adding instant coffee powder but they cracked and rose unevenly when baking. My peppa macs were good (coloured with pink gel). The only difference in the 2 macs was just the addition of coffee for Pedro. I use the French meringue method. Is coffee powder the culprit here? Would appreciate if you could enlighten me! Thanks!

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    1. Hi Erin,

      I have not tried adding instant coffee powder but instant tea powder I have tried and had no problems with it. Although adding cocoa and tea powders, or even dessicated coconut etc may affect the consistency and texture of the macarons, I doubt they will cause much problems if they are well sifted and mixed thoroughly with almond and icing sugar before macaronage.

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    2. I suspect I "disturbed" the batter too much when I used the tooth pick to shape them into ovals for Pedro. Do u think that's the reason? Cos I piped some straightforward round ones with leftover batter and those were ok.

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    3. Hi Erin,

      Yes using the toothpick to pull the batter effectively "folds" the batter some more. Longer resting times are usually required if that is the case. If you are using Italian method, this shouldn't be too much of an issue. Simply wait until the surface of the shells are really dry to touch before sending to oven.

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    4. Thanks! I shall try again. Your bakes are so inspiring btw!

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  3. Hi!
    fantastic work! How do you know how much meringue you have to add to the mix of the colored masses?

    Thanks! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, you may use the formula

      weight of meringue = 0.53 x weight of mass.

      I played around with the ratio a little (from 0.51 to 0.55) and find that this is the value to use if you don't want to risk not having enough meringue to go around

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  4. Hi could you please email me the templates of these please. I'm from Australia email is 605349cc@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete