Assorted French Petit Fours

Preheat the oven to 180°C (160° fan) / 350F / gas 4 and grease and line two large baking trays with greaseproof paper. Combine 450 g of icing sugar with the ground almonds in a large mixing bowl.

Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt in a separate, clean mixing bowl until stiffly peaked. Fold the egg whites into the ground almond mixture and then divide into six small bowls.

Colour three of the bowls with food dye, leaving a fourth uncoloured. Add a teaspoon of almond extract to the fifth and the cocoa powder to the sixth.

Mix well until incorporated. Spoon into six, separate piping bags fitted with round nozzles. Pipe 16 rounds of each mixture onto the baking trays, spaced apart. Stud the almond macaroons with chopped hazelnuts.

Leave them for 15 minutes, and then bake for 8–10 minutes until just set. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Heat the cream in a heatproof bowl in the microwave until hot, then add the chocolate and stir until smooth. Set to one side. Beat together the butter and icing sugar in a mixing bowl using an electric mixer.

Once pale and thick, divide the mixture between four bowls. Blitz the pistachios in a food processor until finely ground, and then add to one bowl, stirring well to incorporate.

Add the strawberry jam to another bowl and add the passionfruit puree and remaining almond extract to bowls as well, mixing thoroughly. Spoon the fillings into clean piping bags.

Pipe the passionfruit buttercream onto the undersides of four orange macaroons. Pipe the almond buttercream onto four of the almond and hazelnut macaroons and pipe the chocolate ganache onto half of the chocolate macaroons and the plain ones. Pipe the strawberry buttercream onto the red macaroons and the pistachio buttercream onto the green macaroons.