Vanilla Bean Macarons with Christmas Frosting

These decadent Vanilla Bean Macarons are topped with gorgeous edible glitter for a completely magical, festive holiday treat. Get creative with these vibrant Christmas pastries! Learn to make 3 tasty macaron variations.

Vanilla Bean Macarons with Christmas Frosting

Oh my gosh, I am absolutely  in love with our latest edition of Christmas macarons! Stephanie and I are at it again, and we had seriously way too much fun making these sparkly holiday macarons. We got glitter everywhere!

I took a tray of these beauties to a holiday party this year and I cannot tell you how much everyone’s eyes lit up! They are definitely the star of the show, and people are so surprised when they bite into these fabulous cookies for a light, fluffy, decadent surprise. Not only are they stunning, but we also filled them with three festive holiday frostings. Like these red macarons, filled with Spicy Milk Chocolate Mocha Ganache.

And our white macarons, filled with Eggnog Marshmallow Fluff.

These fun candy cane swirled macarons are filled with White Chocolate Peppermint Buttercream. Can you say yum??

You guys totally know how to make macarons now, but if you need a refresher, check out our Thanksgiving and Halloween macarons for step by step photo guides.

White Chocolate Peppermint Buttercream Macarons

Here’s how we made our White Chocolate Peppermint Buttercream. I looked for soft candy cane sticks to use for this buttercream, but I couldn’t find them, so I went with these soft peppermint candies. I wanted that fun look of crushed peppermint in my frosting, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s teeth with rock hard candy!

Unwrap a few peppermints and crush, crush, crush until you have approximately 1/4 cup.

I didn’t want my frosting to be too chunky, so I crushed mine pretty fine.

This will give your frosting just a hint of peppermint, but feel free to add more if you want a stronger peppermint taste!

Now for your white chocolate. Just grab a bar of white chocolate and chop it up here. But don’t use white chocolate chips, they’re too waxy and will give your frosting a funky texture.

Melt your white chocolate in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds and add it to your frosting.

Love these peppermint specks! This frosting is not too sweet and the flavor of the macaron really shines through here.

Eggnog Marshmallow Fluff Macarons

Next up is our Eggnog Marshmallow Fluff! Oh my gosh, I love, love, loved this one! This one totally turned out to be my favorite and I will definitely be making it again ASAP. Now I’ll admit, I don’t like eggnog, but I can handle this fun Sugar Cookie Eggnog! It’s sweet and tastes like a milkshake. In other words, it doesn’t taste like eggnog at all. :) If you really can’t stand the thought of using eggnog, feel free to use heavy cream instead, but trust me, you must make this sweet, fluffy frosting! It is to die.

So light and fluffy.

Spicy Milk Chocolate Mocha Ganache Macarons

And finally we have our Spicy Milk Chocolate Mocha Ganache. This beautiful chocolate ganache has so many wonderful flavors going on. Milk chocolate, a hint of coffee, and warm Christmas spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, and allspice. These warm flavors pair perfectly with Mexican vanilla, if you have some on hand.

Feel free to use ground spices here, but sometimes, on special occasions, I like to grind them myself. They pack so much flavor and fill the kitchen with such an incredible fragrance all day.

I use a $20 coffee bean and spice grinder from Krups to do the job. Just add a few whole spices to grinder, add the lid and press the button to grind into a fine powder.

Perfect. Usually by the time I can’t hear the spices clanging around in there anymore, it’s ready!

Just turn the grinder over and tap and the lid becomes a bowl for all your freshly ground spices. Makes scooping out the right measurement a cinch.

Cinnamon. Allspice. Cloves. Nutmeg. I cannot tell you how fabulous this smells!

Note: I only used the spice grinder for the allspice and cloves, I use a fine grater or zester for the nutmeg and the cinnamon was pre-ground.

This spicy ganache will warm you right up!

Decorating Your Merry Macaroons

Now for the fun part! Oh my gosh, we got glitter everywhere! It was all over our hands, faces, clothes, cameras, and even Miley and Howie were pretty sparkly by the end of it. It was so much fun. We used Disco Dust edible glitter in American Red and Rainbow. I was worried the glitter would add a funky texture to the macarons, but you actually can’t tell it’s there at all.

To prepare the macarons for the glitter, we brushed them with a simple syrup, which is just equal parts sugar and water boiled until the sugar dissolves and then cooled. I did 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water, but you could probably get by with 1/4 cup here. I forgot to get a picture of this step!

For the candy cane swirl macarons, Stephanie made this pinwheel template for us. Just lay it on the macaron, sprinkle with red glitter, gently lift off the template, and then quickly flip the macaron over to remove excess glitter.

Download Stephanie’s pinwheel template here.

Now sprinkle the whole thing with rainbow glitter!

Eek! I love these!

And for the red and white macarons, just sprinkle the whole thing with glitter!

These magical macarons are a must for the holidays.

Plus they’re the best way to get glittery fairy dust lips. :)

Be sure to check out Stephanie€™s photos and recap
of our Christmas macaron making day!

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