Starry Wonderment Macaron & Cookie Creation

"Make something with as many stars as possible, and a moon, and maybe a pig. Because the recipient said she wants to be surrounded by stars." 

If you were given a task like this, how would you put it into a picture? This was my take on it using cookie and macaron as my medium of expression 😊. 

Matcha hojicha flavoured macarons and hojicha cookie tree! As usual, my bakes are fondant-free and this has minimal inedible items included. 

I wanted to create everything in macaron at first but thought it is too risky due to the fairly thin parts on the tree skeleton structure. I decided to use my default cookie base for construction projects to ensure a sturdier support structure is present without having to use inedible dowels. The recipe is tweaked a little by replacing the cornflour with plain flour for a sturdier structure, and hojicha and cocoa powder added for a darker colour. I adapted my cookie template from Jennifer Maker. 

Recipe for Hojicha cocoa cookie

Ingredients :

114g unsalted butter

100g caster or brown sugar 

1 egg (51g without shell) 

285g plain flour

1/4 tsp salt

1tsp vanilla extract

1 tbs hojicha powder

1 tsp cocoa powder

Steps:

Please refer to this post for the steps. I rolled the dough to 4mm thickness before cutting the tree shape out. Add milk a little at a time if the dough is too dry and crumbly. Add flour a little at a time if too sticky and soft to work with. 

I used the Swiss meringue method recipe for the macaron shells. 

Undecorated macaron shells

I used pink lustre dust to create some of the intermediate shades of pink for the macaron stars. 

I used edible marker, lustre dust and royal icing for adding the details on the pig, moon and star. 

I used a mixture of hojicha and matcha ganache for the fillings. I added some crunchy chocolate balls for the large base macaron shell, which is around 14cm in diameter. 

Hojicha ganache, matcha ganache and crunchy chocolate balls. 

The assembled base looks pretty on its own! 

I filled the moon and stars with hojicha ganache. The stars are glued to the tree with hojicha ganache.

But before I glued the stars on, I had to take a photo of the tree on the base! It looks like something out of a children's picture storybook! I used stiff royal icing to secure the cookie tree to the base macaron. It is sturdy enough so no dowels are needed. I just reinforced the cookie structure with some royal icing on the back surfaces of the cookies. 

With love, 

Phay Shing