A young lady wanted me to make this for her boyfriend's birthday which falls on the last day of the year. This customized carousel includes things that are special to them...bears, hearts and a duckie :). It's the first time I am including a fancy macaron as a decorative piece right at the top of the carousel.
I used the reduced-sugar macaron shell recipe. 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, as well as the template for the bears. You may refer to my video tutorials for macaron basics and piping of complex shapes on the blog too. You may refer to this post for the dimensions of the shells required to make the carousel and the respective baking times. I piped a scalloped roof like the one similar to the sheep macaron carousel as I think it's really pretty and it is very helpful for positioning the paper straws during the assembly. Checkout the sheep carousel post for detailed steps of assembly.
Just to share some photos of the process...
Piping out the various parts...
Freshly baked shells!
I decorated the duck and bears with black edible marker. Heart sprinkles were attached onto the bears' hands with a bit of royal icing. Some peach coloured lustre dust was added to give the bears rosy cheeks.
Lavender Earl Grey flavour was requested for the filling. You may refer to this post for the filling recipe.
Lavender white chocolate filling for white bear.
Assembled bears and duck!
It's always a joy to watch the pieces come together to form a wonderful structure :).
Have a great 2017!
With love,
Phay Shing
This is so cute! I was wondering if you would have a tutorial on how to pipe the duck? Thank you!
ReplyDeleteHi, I haven't been producing tutorials for specific designs as the principles are the same as what I already did in my video tutorials for basics and complex shapes. Links can be found in this blog post :).
DeleteThe duck is pretty simple. Just pipe the body and let it dry partially. Pipe the head and wings. Use a bit of the yellow batter to add orange gel colouring. It doesn't matter if the orange batter is over mixed as it is a small part only. Use a fine tip to pipe out the beak or in my case, I used a toothpick to paint the batter on since I only made two ducks. I hope this helps :)