We make ALOTofsupercuteandmagicalunicorncakes&cupcakes. All of them utterly perfect for kids parties or Christenings! This time we were asked to make a more grown-up unicorn cake. Adorned with bubblegum pink macarons, pastel meringues, 24k gold leaf and a more pretty than adorable unicorn. We think this cake added the perfect amount of grown-up magic to the party!
Pretty pastel unicorn cake for a fun birthday party!
The pastel unicorn cake was covered in a silky whitened buttercream in our popular Strawberry Milkshake flavour. We then added a soft lavender ombré effect along the base before adding a mix of fun sprinkles. 24k edible gold leaf was then applied before a blush pink drip edged one side of this cutie!
A box full of matching party cupcakes accompanied this pastel unicorn cake! Some were rose swirls of white buttercream finished with 24k gold, others featured pink chocolate drizzles, sprinkles, pretty roses and pastel meringues!
Cute pastel unicorn cake and cupcakes!
We LOVE drip cakes as they’re usually loaded with so many sweet treats! This pastel dream cake was topped with a flurry of sprinkles (we used ‘Crush’ and ‘Pastel Princess’ both from Shire Bakery), pretty pink macarons, pastel turquoise meringue kisses and pink and lavender roses!
That magical unicorn on top? 100% hand crafted using zero moulds whatsoever. We studied and sketched a few stylised unicorns and horses before experimenting with fondant. In the end it needed to be pretty stable, but the pose couldn’t look static. We decided to have the unicorn stood on an edible cloud to make it durable and have one leg arched up! This also meant that the unicorn could stand a little higher than all the treats on top.
This sure was a fun order to make. What’s not to love right? Unicorn theme! Macarons! Cute colour palette!
It’s December in less than 48 hours! How crazy is that? Get yourself ready for the quickly approaching festive season with these super cute and super chic macaron baubles! They’re perfect for your tree, nestled inside a sweet Christmas Eve box or added as stylishly edible gift tags on presents!
Oh la la! Just look at those little pretties! They’re available in boxes of 6 baubles for £10. You can opt for an even mix or go for all one flavour too. We’re also able to ship these nationwide (UK) for an added P&P cost of £10 which gets you speedy next day delivery (though this is unavailable for weekend or Monday deliveries). Read on for more about those cute little macarons! Or you can contact us to order via the form below!
This one (above) is the boozy one and will, most likely, be the popular option for all the grown-ups out there! It’s a Raspberry Pink Gin macaron. A lovely blush pink macaron filled with pink gin infused raspberry preserve and a gin & tonic raspberry buttercream. It’s then all dressed up as a festive Christmas pudding with an icing drip, pink berries and tiny fondant holly leaves. Ready for party season!
Pretty Christmas macaron baubles!
This gorgeous macaron is our popular Vanilla & White Chocolate Truffle flavour! It’s a white macaron filled with creamy Madagascan vanilla bean and Belgian white chocolate buttercream with a candy drizzle. We then finish with a flurry of white and pale pink snow sprinkles including sugar pearls, confetti and snowflakes!
Each pretty Christmas macaron bauble is finished with a ribbon, large bow and our famous glittering swing tag! They’re easy to slip on to your Christmas tree branch. You can also add them to hand-tied bows on presents too. We think they’d even look cute on a bauble covered wreath! Obviously, we added our macaron baubles to a super pink Christmas tree!
Tips for perfect macarons vary between vague aloof answers (some blogs don’t want to share secrets, but they want the traffic) to heavy weekend ready material (which will make you stressed and frustrated). Sometimes all you need to do is simplify the situation. Find out what you’re doing or using and be logical about how it could be hindering your macarons. Think about it… rough looking macarons just need the dry mix refining a little, wonky shapes need to be controlled more when piping, rock hard macarons need less bake time. Sometimes, in all the excitement, a step or ingredient may be getting looked over on the recipe meaning flat and unappetising treats. Check out our quick and simple top 5 essential tips for perfect macarons below for a little nudge in the right direction!
5 Essential Tips For Perfect Macarons
01: Read the recipe
This tip might sound crazy and obvious, but it’s the one most people get insanely wrong. We’ve had people think that whipping your egg whites means adding in whipped cream. Seriously. When you’ve found a recipe that you want to try print it out, sit down, READ it, make notes even, make sure you understand it and then plan when you can give it a try. The last thing you want is for a recipe to fail because you’ve gotten really excited and just rushed into making it. It’s pretty easy to do, but it’s also easy to avoid too.
Once you mess up a recipe it starts to feel like a chore so slow it down. If we find a recipe that’s got our taste buds a-tingling we print it out, discuss it between us, maybe tweak it a little (but we’ve worked as recipe developers so we’re used to this bit), sometimes put a twist on the flavour and schedule in some free time to give it a try.
The amount of macarons we’ve spotted that have looked like baked versions of the Hunchback of Notre Dame is ridiculous. One of our tips for perfect macarons is to invest in a good food processor and blitz your ground almonds down to a fine powder. Also, sieve your icing / powdered / confectioner’s sugar. Even though icing sugar contains a little anti-caking agent to stop it from clumping it’s still going to have lumps and bumps in it. You’ll know you’ve got your dry ingredients to a lovely fine feel when you’ve piped out your macarons and they ‘settle’ and show as fabulous glossy discs with minimal bumps!
One handy tip (especially for anyone who hates sifting) is to layer your dry ingredients (half of the icing sugar then ground almonds and then the rest of the icing sugar) in your food processor before blitzing. This grinds down your icing sugar even further taking out the sieve step as well as keeping those ground almonds blitzed yet cool (once they heat too much they produce oil which isn’t good for macarons).
Another one of our top tips for perfect macarons. Accuracy with macarons is beyond essential so cups just are not going to cut it. If you don’t have any scales then we’d strongly recommend buying some. Cups are never going to be accurate and cup amounts can vary depending on what you’re measuring… e.g. solids and liquids. When it comes to weighing, however, grams (for powders and solids) is the same as millilitres (liquids). So 100g of flour weighs the exact same as 100ml of water. Easy.
Your scales will also come in damn handy for weighing out equal balls for cake pops and even equal amounts of buttercream to layer between cakes. Keep it simple if you’re not used to scales, however, buying a set of beautiful Victorian style scales is not going to serve you well in the long run.
All macarons should be fairly uniform. It’s a fairly runny mixture so this is hard to do at times, but by using a template underneath your baking sheet OR by getting hold of a baking mat specifically for macarons you get more consistent results. It also takes away quite a bit of stress that comes with piping them AND gives you a good idea of how many shells you’re going to get out of a sheet.
Macarons are tricky. A few things can hinder their development both in the oven and out. Never think your macarons will turn out perfect every time (until maybe you’ve been testing them frustratingly for 2 years) or you’re destined to tempt fate. If your first or 50th batch comes out of the oven all wrong don’t feel bad. You probably need to try making batches and batches with slight variations of the recipe to find what works for you. Sorry, but it’s pretty true. For almost 2 years we baked macarons at least once or twice a week until we were happy. We’d try some with cream of tartar and some without. Some with a certain brand of food colorant. Some would be made with a stiff meringue whipped for 5 minutes and some whipped a little less. Even baking times and placements in the oven changed. We nerdy catalogued a few from each batch and wrote down pros, cons and what we did/used. Sometimes it just takes time and practice.
Sometimes it’s just a little problem solving work. One of the most essential tips for perfect macarons is to think logically… if your macaron shells are hard and crunchy they are either over baked because they’ve been in the oven too long or they’re on too high a temperature. If they’re browning then check if you left the oven light on or if there are heating bars inside (they glow red when hot) that could be caramelising the tops. Try switching the light off, lowering your tray or block the red bars with a baking try slid underneath but above the macarons and upping the bake time a little.
Did you spot our fabulous macarons adorning the pages of Love Our Wedding magazine? If not then you should really head on over to their site, download a copy of their amazing FREE magazine and enter the competition! If you’re in the UK and you’re recently engaged or planning your wedding (lengthy engagements are welcome too) then winning lots of lovely things to help make your wedding happen is going to be a no brainer right?
Flavours in the image include… Raspberry Chambord, Strawberry Milkshake and Vanilla Confetti! Our Raspberry Chambord option is a mid-pink macaron filled with Fortnum & Mason raspberry preserve infused with Chambord liqueur and fruity raspberry buttercream, drizzled with Belgian white chocolate and sprinkled with raspberry pieces. Strawberry Milkshake features a creamy strawberry and Belgian white chocolate ganache filling with shells drizzled in more Belgian white chocolate and finished with miniature edible sugar pearls. Finally our Vanilla Confetti flavour is created using white macaron shells sandwiched with Madagascan vanilla buttercream and studded with fun rainbow confetti sprinkles!
Remember, head over to Love Our Wedding magazine for your chance to win our macaron wedding favours as well as wedding rings, a manicure, designer veil and lots more! You can even fill out a form and enter via this blog post on their site. Good luck!
We LOVE Perfect Wedding magazine. It’s an amazing monthly mag that features anything and everything that could inspire your perfect wedding from stunning floral arrangements to delicious cakes! Our picture perfect ruffled peony wedding cake was featured in issue 117 (page 209 to be exact) and recently our freshly baked macarons graced the pages of issue number 121 as part of their sweet wedding favours feature. Glistening from the pages is a photograph of our popular Pink Champagne macarons; pretty pink shells filled with Gosset Grand Rosé Brut NV infused buttercream and splattered with edible 24k gold paint!
Our macarons in Perfect Wedding Magazine… plus a macaron FAQ!
We thought we’d put together a little more information about our most popular treats. Macarons. Possibly the daintiest, alluring and strangely photogenic (if made well) of sweets. They’re also finicky little things and so hard to perfect. A lot of people contact us daily about how our macarons look or make them feel (seriously), what tips can we give them and how they can book them for their birthday/wedding/anniversary/weekend treat. We also get the odd “are they OK for people with nut allergies?”… the main ingredient in them is almonds. So treat (pun intended) this blog post of ours as a sort of F.A.Q on macarons if you will.
Please note: Prices for our macarons are correct at time of press (June 2016), however, they are subject to change.
Do you make your own macarons?
This might sound like a crazy question, but we’ve been asked this A LOT. We found ourselves utterly confused as to why this would even be asked until someone mentioned that they found out a cake shop bought in pre-frozen shells and macarons made by another company. Maybe it’s just the way we are, but that shocked us. Anyway, let’s get to our answer, which is a definite yes. YES we make our own macarons. In fact, we love making them. We also simply wouldn’t get the range of flavours we have if we didn’t. Plus it’s just plain fun for us to whip them up, think of fun flavours, add sprinkles and drizzles, style with them and photograph them. No mass made, pre-frozen, someone else’s hard work here.
How do you make your macarons?
They’re made of two baked shells containing mainly finely ground almond flour, confectioners’ sugar (aka icing sugar or powdered) and egg whites. Sounds simple right? Wrong. Getting our macaron recipe right took a process of 2 whole years of testing various recipes, adjusting amounts and bake times, experimenting with resting various stages or ingredients and also repeatedly banging our heads on the wall. We changed our recipe a total of 18 times before we established the one that worked for us. We even spent weeks baking the shells on different racks in our convection oven and with different brands of baking trays and silicone sheets before labelling each batch and assessing them. Our obsession did get that insane. So the short answer of that question is… our recipe came from hard work, pure stubbornness and a hell of a lot of testing.
Are your macarons gluten free?
Macaron recipes don’t contain any wheat or gluten as the whipped egg white meringue is what makes them rise a little. Some flavours may contain a little gluten in, but this may come from the filling variety. Back in the day we tested amazing flavours like Cookie Dough and Brownie (which may come back so don’t worry). To get the flavour and textures the Cookie Dough included a no-bake and egg-free dollop of chocolate chip dough in the middle of Madagascan vanilla bean buttercream. Brownie featured Belgian chocolate buttercream and a small piece of chocolate brownie in the centre. Both due to the cookie and brownie fillings contained gluten.
Are macarons OK for nut allergies?
The short answer is no. Macarons are created using ground almonds, which definitely aren’t suitable for nut allergies. Some people, however, are only allergic to peanuts and are OK with other types, but make sure that you check with any guests or anyone you’d love to purchase them for!
Can you ship to the US (or any other country outside of the UK)?
No. Sorry, but they just wouldn’t make the journey. They need to be fresh and given the amount of time it could take to get to you they just wouldn’t be. Also, your country may have restrictions on certain food items being sent through international mail. International postage can also get a little rough so these delicate morsels wouldn’t be in a fit state when they finally hit your doorstep!
We get the above question with cakes and cupcakes too and our answer is the same.
Can you ship macarons across the UK?
Right now when it comes to larger quantities (e.g, parties or wedding favours) we sure can! In fact we have a number of macaron orders booked in for 2017-18 for wedding receptions and birthday parties in London, Essex, North Wales, South Wales, Harrogate, York, Edinburgh, Nottingham and Manchester. Our minimum order is 100 macarons which vary in price slightly depending on flavour choices. Macarons that include champagne flavours for example cost a little more than a more straight forward vanilla bean flavour. All our macarons will be baked and filled fresh, packed up in boxes with acid-free tissue paper and other packing materials before being posted out via Next Day/Sign For delivery. We’ll continuously check tracking (as well as send over the details so you can track them yourself too) then text, email or call you (or your venue) to make sure they’ve arrived safely!
How do I store my macarons?
We advise our customers to store them in their fridge if they’re not going to devour them immediately (which to be honest doesn’t always happen - we get a lot of emails for customers who only just managed a few minutes of looking at them before polishing them all off). To make them last even longer a great tip is to transfer them into airtight containers before placing them in the fridge.
When should I eat / serve them?
As soon as possible. Macarons are hygroscopic which means that they soak up the moisture around them and get softer and softer with time. It’s best to enjoy your macarons within the 48 hours of purchasing them so you can taste them at their best of course! If you’re planning a wedding or dinner party make sure that you don’t buy your macarons too far in advance.
There you have it! As well as lots of images of our gorgeous macarons (including a fabulous press article too) we’ve tried our best to answer some of the most frequently asked questions regarding those petite treats. We do get lots of queries every day via email, Instagram comments and Facebook messages about how/what/where/wtf we make and even photograph our macarons. If we tired to answer every single one then we’d never be able to make them ourselves so here are the basics! If you have any quick questions feel free to comment!
