Mermaid Assorted Macarons -- sea themed macarons part 1

When I received this request for mermaid macarons, my first thought was "Is this even possible?!" I did a quick search. Apparently it has been done before :p. I have to thank the requester for providing the opportunity to stretch my abilities for piping macaron batter! Here's my first attempt at mermaid macarons along with some starfish and seashells!

The starfish and seashells are going to be featured in the upcoming Creative Baking: Macarons book published by Marshall Cavendish so keep a lookout for those! Keep a lookout for my next macaron post which has more sea themed macarons too :). All fillings are non-refrigerated as these are given out as door gifts. There's Earl Grey, strawberry and orange white chocolate (new flavour!), and dark chocolate flavours.

You may refer to this post for the basic macaron recipe.  Omit the strawberry emulco and colouring ingredients that are not relevant. You may refer to this post for piping complex shapes as a guide on how to create virtually any shape of macaron. As this subject has many colours, keep in mind to use the ratio of 0.55 for weight of Italian meringue/ weight of mass as you portion out the batter for the various colours. Use the area of each colour as a gauge of how much your should portion for each colour. Create skin colour by using a tiny dip of orange gel food colouring. As you can see, there is a lot of planning and math involved before embarking on such a complex design. Thank God for my Engineering background :p.

Just to share some photos of the process...

Piping the skin-coloured parts along with the hair, which is coloured using charcoal powder or cocoa powder.

Piping out the rest of the parts

Wait for the skin-coloured batter to form a sticky membrane before piping on the bra or the mermaid will appear flat-chested :p.

Freshly baked shells!

Prepare some royal icing to add on the flower and crown. The crowns were piped onto baking sheet, thoroughly oven dried at 60°C fan mode before transferring onto the mermaid. The facial features were drawn on with black edible marker. Peach coloured lustre dust was brushed on for rosy cheeks.

Freshly iced and decorated shells!

Non-refrigerated filling was requested so I selected a few to include in this assortment. I have tested out a new flavour for this batch. Orange white chocolate filling! You may refer to the respective recipes for strawberry white chocolate and Earl Grey white chocolate.

Dark chocolate filling is made by simply melting 50g chopped dark chocolate with 5g shortening and 1/10 tsp salt.

 Here's the recipe for orange white chocolate but I strongly recommend you to refer to my updated recipe for a yummier filling.

Orange white chocolate
Ingredients (fills about 8-9 macarons):
50g white chocolate, finely chopped
1/2 tsp orange emulco
7g vegetable shortening
1/10 tsp salt

Steps:
1. Melt white chocolate in microwave oven in 10 second bursts at medium-high power, stirring well in between bursts of heating. You may melt using the double-boiling method too.

2. Place the rest of the ingredients in a small saucepan and heat over low heat until shortening is melted.

3. Stir the orange mixture before adding a little at a time into the melted chocolate. Stir the chocolate well with each addition.

4. Transfer to piping bag and pipe onto macaron shells. Let the white chocolate sit for a few minutes at room temperature if it is too runny to pipe. Consistency should be like toothpaste before piping.

Store the macarons in airtight container in a cool and dry place.

First time changing to this type of packaging for individual macarons...

White chocolate pearl covered with pearlescent lustre dust were used as the "pearls"

Mermaids, seashells and starfish weren't the only shells I made for this batch of sea themed macarons. Here's a sneak preview of all the shells I made!

Keep a lookout for part 2 of the sea themed series!

Thank God the macarons were very well received and feedback was they were yummy and not too sweet despite being white chocolate based :).


With love,
Phay Shing