Macaron Tower

In Paris, macaron towers are in almost every patisserie window. Colorful and beautiful, complementing other fine tarts and cakes also on display. Here is one from Gérard Mulot in Luxembourg. Macaron towers seem to come in different shapes, sizes and construction. Time has come for me to step up to the occasion and make one of these extravagant display!

It began with a request for a birthday. Based on the headcount, there will be 50-some macarons. We'll do a pyramid with 10 on each face (4+3+2+1) and 4 along each edge. Flavor requests were vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and pistachio. A color per row? I think that'll be pretty :).

Love making chocolate macarons! Macaron flavors are almost always from the filling. But chocolate can be made by just adding cocoa to the dough. They smell and taste like a whole new entity.

The challenge for this "cake" is the mounting part. I opted not to make shelves for the macarons to sit on but rather held by toothpicks for a clean look. I guess the easiest thing would be to get a foam in the shape of the tower of choice. But the foam shape and size options are pretty limited. So to make a pyramid as planned, each face needs to be ~8". Material has to be punchable and thick enough to hold the toothpick. I bought a couple of foam poster boards and cut out the faces. I tripled the boards to give it that thickness I needed. Once the edges were secured, gaps were filled with foam wedges. Wrapped the whole pyramid in a cake board foil and voila, ready to prickle them macarons!

Besides the tower construction, it was important to have the macarons in an uniform size. Otherwise, the pyramid size planning will be off X(. Also, I made the filling pretty stiff so it won't run down at an angle. They actually hold pretty well on a toothpick :). Last but not least, I made a fluffy bow to add a woomph to the tower. I hope the birthday girl likes it!!