MACARONS

not too bad at all!!!

the usual healthy ingredients in all good cooking, sugar, butter, cream

We begin with making salted caramel for one of the fillings for our macarons.

Add the cream to bring down the temperature of the caramel, watch you don't burn yourself,

then the salt,

stir,

let it thicken,

 into a bowl to chill,

Next the creme patisserie for the chocolate filling, milk, cornflour, chocolate, sugar, egg yolks,

 separating eggs, a tricky job at the best of times,

whisking same yolks and sugar,

pouring hot milk onto sugar and cornflour,

 cooking some more,
 adding the chocolate while beating well,

and beating,

and beating,

and viola!!

laying it out flat onto a plate helps it cool if you are in a hurry or a 3 hour class, otherwise you plan ahead and make it the day before,

 Next the very scrummy and beautifully hued raspberry filling,

 blend,

This is Sam, the photographer photographing us while we photographed our class.  His photos are going to the new web page.

Cook,

Stir,

and once again chill,

 on to the all important task of making the macaron shells,

Sift

 Add the separated, strained egg whites, not this many of course, these were prepared the day before so that they were pristine and chilled,

add some to the sifted almonds and sugar,

 and the rest can be whipped  ready to receive the boiling sugar syrup to create Italian meringue,

a tricky process without a mixmaster,

and results in this confection of stiff, white clouds,

add this mix to the almond, sugar, unwhipped egg white mix,

 then begins the important task of macronnage, a word created purely for this skill.  It takes some time, needs to make a certain noise and gives your arms a workout. something for those tuckshop arms perhaps.





tinting the shells requires a delicate touch,

Pino gives us a demonstration on how to properly fill and refill a piping bag,

and onto the technique of piping the macaron shell,

till we have a tray of perfectly piped pink macarons,

these were done with black food colouring but ended up looking silver and quite pretty,

 Yellow ones for the chocolate filling,

and put all the leftover colours together to pipe psychedelic 60's style macarons,

                      

Our fillings are perfectly bagged,

whipping the chilled salted caramel

and here is our first tray of macarons, no cracks!!  there is however a trick to removing them from the tray intact,

and then to the piping,

some were brushed with edible gold

everyone pulled out their cameras to photograph the results

the ultimate test of tasting with mumbles of approval around mouths full of macaron crumbs,

                    packing,

and saying farewell to new friends

well that was my last cooking class in Paris, the New Year has come in and now there is only one more night and day here before I go home.

Hard to know just what to do before I leave but I'm sure I will find something

so for the  moment

Au revoir

Jo

PS   I encourage anyone wanting to have cooking lessons whilst in Paris to give cookn'with class a go.  You can find them here at http://cooknwithclass.com