The end of the year is creeping by so quickly, before you know it, it's already Christmas! To celebrate Christmas this year, I baked a family of Gingerbread-inspired macaron designs - Gingerbread Man, Gingerbread Woman, and Gingerbread House Macarons! 

I was inspired by all the beautiful Gingerbread cookie designs on Instagram and Pinterest, and tried to recreate the same level of detail on the macarons. While it is time consuming to pipe the "white icing", especially for the Gingerbread House, I'm glad that they turned out really looking like Gingerbread cookies!

They are filled with Dark Chocolate, Cookies & Cream, and Raspberry ganache. If time allows in the future, I would experiment with making a Gingerbread ganache.

GINGERBREAD MACARONS RECIPE 
Gingerbread Man, Gingerbread Woman, Gingerbread House Designs
by Sumopocky

Yield: ~ 16 macarons (larger than usual)

Ingredients
[For Macaron Shells]
Meringue: 70g of Egg whites + 90g of Castor sugar
80g of Almond flour
80g of Powdered/icing sugar
Food colouring to get the batter colours in Step 4

[For Filling]
Click here to fill with your desired flavour!

Directions
[For Macaron Shells]
1. Make the meringue. In a bowl, beat the egg whites on low speed using an electric mixer until it is white and frothy (approximately 1 minute). Gradually add the sugar 1/4 at a time. When the first addition of sugar has completely dissolved (approximately 1 minute later), increase the mixer speed to medium and add until all the sugar has been incorporated. Continue to beat until stiff peaks form. [Basic Macaron Tutorial Video]
2. Sift the almond flour and icing sugar to the meringue.
3. Begin macaronage. Using a spatula, start the macaronage process by folding and lightly scraping the top of the batter. Continue until the wet and dry ingredients just start to become combined. In other words, you can't see traces/clumps of almond flour/icing sugar in the meringue. At this point, the batter should still be quite tacky.
4. Prepare different colours of batter based on the table below with food colouring. By estimation, split the batter into the portions you think you require. I've shared a guide in the table below (if there's too much of a colour, you can always use it to pipe plain macarons 😉). Continue the macaronage till you get a molten-like texture, then transfer to piping bags.

Batter Color White Pink Brown

Estimated Portion 2 tbsp 1 tbsp Remaining Batter

Piping Bag Tip Size small small ~ 3mm diameter

5. Pipe out batter onto parchment paper. Please refer to video above for demonstration.
6. Let the shells dry in a non humid place or in an air conditioned room. You should be able to touch it gently with the tip of your finger without it sticking.
7. Bake in a preheated oven at 150°C for approximately 15 minutes.
8. Let shells cool before piping with filling. Enjoy and have a Merry Christmas!