Contemporary Cake Design owners, Bee and Xavier Pelloux, have made wedding cakes for the stars, including Madonna, Paul McCartney and Pierce Brosnan, as well as working in Harrods and the Ivy. Here they share their expertise with a recipe for delicious macaroons that can be made at home.

Cheltenham-based, Contemporary Cake Designs share tricks of the trade with a recipe for Macaroons that can be enjoyed at home, just in time for National Macaroon Day which falls on Saturday, May 31.

The perfect macaroons are made up of two little cookie type layers that sandwich together a creamy filling. They are commonly used as wedding favours or as part of a wedding cake. As they can be made in a variety of colours and flavours they can be made to fit in with any wedding theme. However macaroons didn’t become a double-decker affair until the beginning of the 20th century. Louis Ernest Ladurees’s (Laduree pastry and salon de the, rue Royale in Paris) grandson, Pierre Desfontaines came up with the idea to fill them with a chocolate panache and to stick them together, creating the macaroons enjoyed today.

Enjoy Macaroon Day by following this recipe for making macaroons from scratch, or buy some ready-made ones from Contemporary Cake Designs who offer a variety of flavours and colours including pistachio, lemon, strawberry, chocolate, mint and coconut.

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Ingredients needed:

- 3 egg whites

- 100g ground almonds

- 100g icing sugar

- 100g caster sugar

- Optional liquid or powder food colouring (depending on what colour you would like them to be)

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Steps on how to create the perfect macaroons:

1. Whisk egg whites with caster sugar until soft peak (add liquid food colour now if required)

2. Mix the ground almonds and icing sugar in a bowl (add powder food colour if required)

3. Fold mix together

4. Prepare the baking tray by covering in a sheet of baking paper and laying a weighted item in each corner to ensure the paper stays put.

5. Fill piping bag with mixture and pipe circles on to the baking paper in desired sizes leaving space for them to expand.

6. Bake at 170 degrees Celsius for 12 -14 minutes (This can depend on the oven so keep a close eye on them)

7. Macaroons are done when you are able to lift them off the baking paper.

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Macaroons are traditionally filled with French buttercream, a video for making this can be found on Contemporary Cake Design’s YouTube channel -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQgT-05BbXI

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For more information about Contemporary Cake Designs and the full list of macaroon flavours visit www.contemporarycakedesigns.com/cakes/chocolate-cakes/