I made macarons for my family Easter brunch this weekend and I got a little carried away decorating them! They might be too cute to eat. Macarons have a notoriously high failure rate since there is a lot that can go wrong: your meringue has to be spot on, your oven has to be calibrated perfectly, and your macronage technique needs finesse.
 
  

It’s a true craft that takes passion and resilience to master. This idea isn’t limited to macarons, so if you haven’t mastered making those little suckers, use your favorite butter cookies and filling. Happy Easter!

Ingredients:
 
Almond Macarons – dyed pink and yellow (optional)
vanilla buttercream or white chocolate ganache filling
100g fondant (50g pink; 25g white; 20g yellow; 5g orange)
edible writer for details

Directions:
 
1. If you;re making macarons, prepare them as per recipe. I used two sizes: 2.5″ and 1″ diameter.

I use a circle template that I made under my silpat to guide me when to stop pouring my macaron batter. I’m getting better at eye-balling my macaron size, but this guarantees identical macaron sizes.

These macarons were pulled out of the oven a little too eary so they didn’t have enough rise. My oven sucks. It has twq hot spots. Half of my tray gets burned and half is under cooked. Only a small few make it out perfectly. Any one looking to sponsor a baker to buy a new oven? haha.
 
For the details: (made in advance)
 
For the chicks: I used orange and yellow fondant for the beak and the crest. For the crest: I rolled out yellow fondant to 1/16″ thin and I took a short cut and used a small flower cutter. For the beak: I rolled out the orange fonant to 1/16″ and cut small triangles using a sharp knife. I carefully pressed two triangles together to create a beak. I adhered the details to the cookies using my filling icing.

For the bunnies:
 
The bunnies took a little bit more work. I first rolled out the pink fondant and used my "number 1" cookie cutter from my Wilton cookie cutter set (two for each cookie). I chose the number 1 particularly because it had rounded edges that look like bunny ears. Using the same cutter, I overlapped cuts on the white fondant to create the lighter shades of the bunny ear (see above). I trimmed off the edges and sized the ears according to the size of my cookies. I bent the edges to add a little shape and character. The bunny nose was cut using the end of a round piping tip. I also added a few bunny tails using round balls of the white fondant. Once all the details have slightly firmed, wedge the bunny ears in between two cookies with the buttercream. Finish adding the nose and tail and, using an edible color writer, mark the eyes and mouth.

  
  Madalina Paul is the blogger behind Duhlicious, a food blog dedicated to creating and sharing unique and original recipes for great tasting food and featuring tutorials, food news, and culinary adventures.