Tags
baking, Cook'n With Class, cooking, food, macarons, Montmartre, National Macaron Day, Paris, travel
In honor of National Macaron Day today, I wanted to recount my first attempt at making that Holy Grail of French pastry—the macaron—during a cooking class in Paris a couple of years ago. I’ve attempted macarons a few times since to varying results—it’s a delightful but frustrating little cookie.
The chocolate, raspberry, and salted caramel macarons from my class at Cook’n With Class in Paris
The macaron class that best fit my schedule that trip was at a small cooking school in Montmartre called Cook’n With Class. The space was small and correspondingly, so was the class size – just five of us. I ended up booking the class online a couple of months before my trip to make sure it didn’t sell out.
We had two instructors, Chefs Briony and Ivy, who specialize in pastry. One of my fellow students was taking the class for the second time and she took copious notes and photos—and I now understand why as I contemplate taking another macaron class the next time I’m in Paris. Another woman was visiting from Indonesia, and the other two were a couple who were spending a month in Paris. Chef Ivy handed us each a red apron, and after we had donned those, it was time to get started. We had a lot of territory to cover in just three hours. Macarons are labor and time intensive — and super finicky — but so worth the effort.
Making the raspberry jam filling
What I loved most about the class was that we were expected to roll up our sleeves and get involved. We received a basic macaron shell recipe, several filling recipes, and a long list (three pages worth) of troubleshooting tips. Chef Ivy would demonstrate a step and get it started. Then, she would hand it off to us to take turns stirring, melting, folding, beating, piping, and so on.
Heating sugar to make a dry caramel
We tackled the fillings first, making three different flavors: chocolate, salted caramel, and raspberry jam. Then came the process of making the macaron shells. It seems deceptively simple at first. The only ingredients are almond meal or flour, powdered sugar, granulated sugar, and egg whites. It’s how you put all of those together that’s the trick. I’ve seen a number of macaron recipes with slightly different steps and techniques, so if you find a recipe that works for you, stick with it!
A plate full of chocolate-y goodness
Here are a few lessons that I learned in my class but am still struggling to implement properly:
1. Be precise when measuring your ingredients. This was the first time I worked with metric measurements and I really appreciate the extra precision. I even invested in a good food scale when I made my first solo attempt at macarons and use it for most of my baking now.
Beating the egg whites
2. Make sure your equipment is super clean before whipping egg whites; also, older egg whites (a few days to a week old) are easier to work with so you should start saving them a few days before you prepare macarons (in a sealed jar or container in the frig, of course).
Folding the almond meal and powdered sugar mix into the egg whites
3. Piping is hard! It’s definitely a learned skill that takes plenty of practice. There is a technique to it and you need steady hands. In my solo attempts, it has taken me a couple of rows to get the hang of piping again.
Piped and resting macaron shells for the salted caramel cookies. Note the imperfectly piped ones—they still tasted fine!
4. Before baking, let the piped macarons rest for about 15 to 30 minutes at room temperature until a skin forms. This helps keep the cookies from cracking while baking, but if conditions are too humid, then the cookies could crack from that. Did I mention that we were given three pages full of troubleshooting tips?
Watching the macaron shells bake
5. As frustrating and time-consuming as they can be, macarons are a wonderfully fun challenge if you love baking. You get to have fun with food coloring (gel or powder only, no liquid!) to create a rainbow of macaron shells, and you can use your favorite flavors for the fillings or try something new. The combinations are seemingly endless. As for me, I’ll just have the salted caramel and the espresso chocolate and the lemon and the cassis and…
Our delicious macarons!
Photos by Judy L. Marchman
Just Judy's World 
Gosh, these are lovely!