Macaron Class From An "Expert"

In September I took a macaron class at a certain upscale kitchen store that shall not be named. The class was a generous and lovely birthday gift from my generous and lovely friend Linda. I was so excited about the class that I told Jenny about it and she too wanted to attend. She even brought her mother-in-law along.

The class description promised to teach “fail safe” methods for making perfect macarons every time.  Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? It is.

When we arrived to the class, we all took a seat and received a crisp white apron and an info packet containing an overview of mac making, the class recipes and some traceable macaron patterns. In order to make all of the macarons that had been promised in the class description (Lavender with white chocolate ganache! Chocolate with chocolate ganache! Lemon! Coconut!), we broke up into five groups of four and then…basically read how to make macarons off a sheet and then did it ourselves with the occasional help from one of the assistants.  In other words, we read a recipe and then made it. In more smug terms, if Jenny and I didn’t already know how to make macarons, we would have been lost. There were no little tips and tricks offered, just the basic details--definitely not fail-safe information.

This is the only picture I took. It's too bad I didn't document the final results.

We chose to make the lavender macarons with the white chocolate ganache, which sounded like a possibly nice, subtle combination. We had our shells piped and ready before any other group and so our macs were the first into the oven. Thank goodness because there were only two small ovens going and most of the other groups macarons set out too long before making it into the oven.  This seems like something they could have managed better, especially considering that this is one of their more popular classes.

Every group also made a different filling and it seems that there was not enough time allowed for the ganaches to set up before it came time to sandwich up our selection of misfit macaron shells. Again, something a popular class should have figured out by now.

Our shells were not bad in terms of the form, but they tasted like nasty, bitter soap. Maybe the instructor was washing out our mouths in advance because he knew we would have some dirty, dirty things to say following this expensive class. Whatever the reason, the recommended amount of lavender was way too high to make an edible cookie. And for the record, I actually enjoy lavender-flavored sweets. Many of the other groups’ cookies were cracked, under baked, or over baked, but we were given cheap little paper plates to take around so that we could make some little Frankenstein cookie samples to take home. Have you ever tried to fill a sandwich cookie with runny ganache? It’s not pretty. 

And the greediest part of all? After extorting a large fee for this class that would given me a macaron-baking phobia had I not already known what I was doing, the assistants made us turn in our aprons at the end of class. Really, Overpriced Cooking Store? You couldn’t spare the aprons?

On the bright side, it wasn’t a total loss because it was still a fun way to spend the morning with friends, and I guess that’s what I will remember most about it.

- Jenn

Macaron Madness

I'm officially making this a disease, and I don't care if no one has ever heard of it.  Here are the symptoms of the madness:

• An inability to sleep at night thinking about powdered sugar and wonder how on earth you could have gone through 6 pounds of it in one week
• Making more than 3 batches of macarons a day
• Somehow think it's the dogs fault when you have over baked your macarons
• Decorating your macarons with candy hearts- just don't do it, it somehow make them look like little cookie hookers - pictures below of me doing it
• Giving your Silpat the stink eye when they (the cookies) stick after baking
• Eating macarons all day, every day and then forcing them down your friends throats

Today, I had this grand idea to make some light pink- baby pink if you will- macarons with a chocolate ganache filling flavored with raspberry extract.  The dog and I were on the hunt for the extract, that being the only thing on earth that I currently don't stock in my pantry, and the raspberry extract gods were not with us today. So I made regular ganache, no biggie.

After I had made a perfect batch of macaron batter I added some pink.  Now I use the gel food colors as to not water down the batter and I put in the perfect amount, it was the pink of baby cheeks, absolutely perfect.  Then they came out of the oven.  Peach.  Does peach scream Valentine's Day to you?  Actually there is only one person I can think of that would still think they are pink, yay color blindness!  Sorry Robert, that was uncalled for.  So what's a girl to do with all these peach cookies?  Why slap some candy hearts on of course. 

Here are the little street walkers now

After all this, I thought why not make a batch of chocolate macarons?  I had never tried adding cocoa powder to the batter, so why not try it now?  My friend has an office bake-off on Monday so I am trying to help him come up with something to bring in.  I also thought I might add some raspberry jam in the middle of the ganache filling since I couldn't find the extract and I LOVE that flavor combination.

I also started playing with painting on colors and adding gold dust after baking

Now that I have finished baking and decorating, I still feel like I have another batch in me.  Screw the laundry. 

-Jenny

Successful macarons!

Ok, so by now you may have realized that I obsess a bit about stuff.  Some may call it OCD, others ADD, I call it being awesome.  I could barely sleep last night thinking about the macaron mayhem that I got myself into yesterday.  When I finally realized that I had under mixed the batter, I resigned myself to a morning of making more macarons.  I had to redeem myself.



Mixing in the first batch of sugar/almond four.  John picked purple today!



This is how the batter should look, like thick ribbons folding back upon itself.  I was afraid to over mix because of deflating the egg whites.   This is what you need to do though, otherwise you end up with gnome hats.

Getting ready to pipe.  What do you do with your wedding crystal?  This is what happened to mine.



I like to call this one, "Early morning sun on perfectly piped macarons"



This is what they should look like when baked, please note, no points and little feet!



Perfect, purple perfection.  I made a little bit of lemon butter cream and voila!  I can sleep at night again.

-Jenny