Descendants of the Sun Plush Toy Macarons with Lemon Filling

I seldom have the capacity or motivation to bake items for fun unless I have the compulsion to make them. This bake is one of them :). It's for a special friend whom I come to know because of macarons, lemon curd and the ever popular K-drama Descendants of the Sun. What better way to do something special for a friend than to combine the things that came up during our blossoming friendship than this creation!

Fox and rabbit plush toy macarons with lemon white chocolate ganache and lemon curd!

I am not a fan of dramas in general because I don't have the time for them but got hooked on watching this one so I got to know about the comrade and the girlfriend ;).

You may refer to this post for the generic recipe for both reduced sugar and non-reduced sugar versions of macaron shells. I used the regular non-reduced sugar version due to the complexity of the design. Reduced sugar shells tend to take a longer time to dry.

You may refer to my Creative Baking: Macarons book for more tips, or refer to the video tutorials for macaron basics and piping complex shapes

Just to share some photos of the process...

Piping the shells!

Freshly baked shells!

The most challenging part about decorating the shells is the camou pattern of the uniforms. I used edible black, brown and green markers to create the patterns. Make use of the brown and black markers to deepen the green such that it appears less neon. Begin with the black patches, followed by the brown and finally the green.

I was actually working on assembling some cupcakes, baking some Miffy shortbread cookies and decorating Snoopy and Charlie Brown macarons (my friend requested for these macarons as well) before I worked on these fellas. I was pretty exhausted by then so I could only manage to finish decorating some of them...

Day 1 of deco!

After a good night's rest I was more able to finish it off!

Take a peek at the feet!

My friend was joking about what I would do with so many leftover egg yolks from baking macarons so the topic of lemon curd came up since it's one way of using up excess egg yolks :).

You may find the recipe for lemon white chocolate ganache and lemon curd over here. Replace lime with lemon.

As lemon curd has a high liquid content, you may want to insulate the curd with something else that has a higher fat content such as buttercream or ganache. Otherwise the shells will turn soggy faster. If you are consuming the macarons soon, you may fill them with pure lemon curd. The whipped ganache holds up very well in Singapore's hot weather so it's good as an insulating layer.

Pipe a thin layer of ganache covering the base of bottom shell, then pipe a wall of ganache to contain the curd.

Fill the wells with lemon curd. Pipe a little ganache over the curd before sandwiching top shell on.

All of them filled with lemon flavoured filling as requested :)

This has got to be classified as one of those "too cute to eat!" bakes :p.


With lots of love,
Phay Shing