Meringue and macaron tower.

After much debate, I settled on a "round the Mediterranean" theme for my birthday party catering. I took inspiration from the flavours of Turkish delight and baklava to concoct my birthday "cake".

The initial idea was for a tower of pink rose-flavoured meringues, piped as roses in case anyone missed the point; interspersed with almond-flavoured meringues; lemon curd cream; decorated with rose petals and mint leaves.

Meringues

I began making the meringues the weekend before the party. I was prepared to have to remake them the night before if they lost their texture, but in the event they kept perfectly crisp in an air-tight cake tin.

I used five eggwhites, rosewater and dab of red food colouring gel to make the meringue "roses". I experimented with various piping nozzles and techniques and eventually settled on a deep star nozzle, with some piping outwards from the centre, and others in a more "nest like" form. I baked these meringues at around 110 degrees so they held their colour well.

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I wasn't entirely convinced by either shape, but my phone categorised the photographs as flowers rather than food, so I guess that will do.

Macarons

Looking up recipes for "almond meringues" I quickly discovered that eggwhite and almond flour is the simple basis of macarons. They have a tricksy reputation, but then so do meringues. I decided to go ahead and see how they turned out. Lots of recipes suggested chocolate, and as the flavour goes well with rose and lemon I figured there was no downside to trying it. I made roughly two and a half times this recipe; again using five egg whites.

I piped the macaron mixture into small circles and left them to surface dry as instructed. The recipe said 15 to 20 minutes at 180 degrees, but after 15 minutes they were already much darker than in the photograph so I whipped them out immediately. Quite a few of them had cracked surfaces - a BAD THING for macarons, apparently - but they tasted good. Next time I will try baking them at a slightly lower temperature. I stored them in an airtight tin to keep them crisp.

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The day before the party I made chocolate ganache and sandwiched the macarons together, before leaving them in the fridge overnight. I think this is meant to soften the macarons slightly but by the following evening they were still very crunchy. That may have been due to initial overbaking but next time I will try to complete them further in advance.

More meringues

I had bought a carton of egg whites containing the equivalent of fifteen eggs, so had around five to spare. I decided to make white vanilla meringues which I could use for the tower or keep separately.

Assembly

Meringue begins to soften the moment you add cream, and keeping a pavlova crisp requires last minute introductions. I prepared the lemon curd cream in advance and had all the ingredients on hand, but I only actually assembled the tower about four hours into the party. Co-opting a couple of friends to help, I constructed wheels of rose and vanilla meringues, scattered with toasted flaked almonds and pomegranate seeds. We stacked them by piping oodles of lemon cream in between the wheels and also into any gaps. We then used more lemon cream to stick the chocolate macarons around the base, then covered the whole thing with more almonds, pomegranate and dried rose petals. I forgot about the mint leaves, but I don't think anyone noticed. A friend had given me a white chocolate creme egg for my birthday present, so I put that on the top for good measure, and then stuck candles into various gaps.

Overall, it was pretty spectacular.