Of Pandas and Talking Bean Dogs... Character Macarons

Bean dogs, salutations kittehs, and pandarons! This week's Baker's Market I made some "squee" inducing macarons that will make you scream out "KAWAII!!!" I love characters and although time consuming, creating little faces out of almond batter is a joy to behold after the fact.

So how does one go about making the faces? It calls for splitting your macaron batter into twos (sometimes threes) and colouring them before piping it. You'll have to work fast with making the eyes especially, as the batter will tend to dry immediately after piping. For the Kitty macarons, once you've piped the rounds, you want to get a toothpick/thin chopstick and shape the ears. Make sure there's ample room to spread the batter out, or they will form together and ruin your whole endevour!

The Panda macarons are made with two different batters. One plain and the other chocolate. It saves a bit of time (since this is a time consuming process) if you make the same macarons with the required batter on the same day, otherwise, you'll have to make minute batches which may or may not form the proper meringue in the mixing bowl. I filled the Pandarons with Orange Blossom ganache, which is a lovely combination!



Mameshiba Macaron is a toughy, due to the fact that there are three different macaron batters I had to work with. First is getting the right colour green for the main head/body. I had to use ample amounts of black food gel to get his eyes right. Also, I made a batch of my green tea macarons and saved some of that batter for their ears! A note of caution as well. I used a fine piping tip (usually reserved for cake decorating) to pip their eyes. You might want to keep a toothpick around just to unclog the end as bits of almond meal may get stuck from time to time.



As for flavours, it goes like this:

Hello Kitty Macarons with Raspberry Jam Buttercream
Pandarons with Orange Blossom Ganache
Mameshiba-rons with Matcha Buttercream