Pumpkin shaped Macarons

It's Halloween!! One of my favourite time of year as kids are usually excited about going to Trick or Treat.

But it seems like the weather have got the better of us as we are all poorly and both kids have temperature and not been well all week.

It's schools half term and kids have a week off, we done nothing apart from cuddled up to watch telly and drink medicine!! But that doesn't stop the fun from baking.

First Halloween bake off are these cute little pumpkin shaped macarons.

Here's my recipe.

Ingredients:

50g ground almonds

60g icing sugar

40g egg white

45g caster sugar

1/2 tsp. orange food gel colour

Follow the method here.

Before you start, draw a template of pumpkins on a piece of paper.

Place a piece of baking paper over it and pipe your mini pumpkins.

 Pipe the stalk first then pipe the pumpkin shape.

 Tap on the worktop to release any trapped bubbles in the macarons.

Rest the macarons until they are dry to touch.

Bake in a preheated oven on 130c for 15 mins.

I baked these on the lowest rack.

Once they are done, leave to cool completely before removing them.

I've baked half using baking paper for the pumpkin shaped macarons, the other half I used the macaron mat and piped round shape. I wanted to see if it made a difference.

I found that using baking paper, the macarons came off easily and none have stuck the paper.

On the other hand, using the macaron mat the macaros baked unevenly and the ones in the middle of the mat were stuck slightly.
The conclusion is that the baking paper worked better but the mat gave perfectly round shapes and all equal in size.

Video of macarons baked on baking paper (watch video)
Video of macarons baked on silicon mat (watch video)

Me and my daughter drew faces on the template so we can draw faces on the macarons with edible pens before we pipe black icing on it.

I used black icing and it is shop bought.

Pipe the designs onto the macarons and wait for it to dry before filling it.

 Here we have our Pumpkin shaped macarons.

Happy Halloween!!