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Tuesday, October 9, 2007
My Saturday Lenotre macaron class is held at the very grand Pavillon Elysee in the park.
You can eat lunch there after class sitting outside on the terrasse...
Our workstation - There are just 6 students in each macaron class held 3 times a week. The classes fill up in advance so plan ahead if you're thinking of attending. The class cost 115 euros. We had a ready supply of croissants and pain au chocolat for weak moments during the almost 4 hour class.
Chef Eric is our very correct and quite elegant professor.
The entire class is in French, but you can more or less keep up even if your language skills are not up to snuff. We are making 3 different flavors of macarons - lemon, caramel, chocolate. Fortunately my neighbor helped translate any specific questions I had or minor whatsits. Mostly I watched and photographed incessently.
Every single ingredient...
is carefully measured out and weighed on the scales using the METRIC system. We get to do that.
Quite a bit of high powered equipment is required to make macarons.This ain't chocolate chip cookies!
First step after the weighing in, is the sifting of the almond meal or flour, the key ingredient of macarons. The particles must be consistently the same size for nice smooth macaron lids. 
Here my neighbor pours the sifted almond flour into the meringue batter of butter and egg whites. We never introduce ourselves so I don't know his name. The class is a bit formal that way. No licking of bowls or spoons or tasting along the way either. No monkey business! Serious classwork from 9 AM until the end of class. Though your Paris spy did manage to sneak a lick of the empty caramel ganache bowl in the sink when no one was looking...
Chef Eric folding in batter. The chef does the most of the important steps while we watch...
He gets to fill the pastry bag too. Probably much more efficiently than I would have done, what with multi-licks and finger tastings... 
Chef Eric demonstrates the proper way to form the lemon macarons on the parchment.
We demonstrate the improper way to make the macaron coques or lids...though they do look very familiar and very Parisien. Hmmm...I won't l go any further here.
The lids are baked about 10 minutes then turned and baked a few more minutes. Here they are coming out of the oven. Note they all have perfect "feet" - as those little ruffly edges are called. A macaron without proper feet is well not really a macaron. One secret trick may be the trays were placed on top of 2 other trays while baking, so they are not sitting directly on the oven racks. Making macarons entails a lot of secrets not written in the printed recipe.
Another secret trick so the lids are easily removed from the parchment - COLD water is carefully poured under the paper and then drained off immediately. The lids are set on racks to REST for 2 hours. Macarons require a lot of beauty sleep before you get to pop them in your mouth.
I've skipped a whole slew of steps. The making of the filling or ganache, that goes inside the meringue "sandwich". I 'd be here forever if I showed all and I'd never get to see the rest of Paris. Chef demonstrates the correct amount of filling for each macaron. Just enough glue to hold them together - not too much or too little. We then got to wreck havoc on the rest :)
Enfin the final step. The two lids come together with a twist of the wrist. Our macs do NOT look like they came from a patisserie for sure. They are much too puffy and plump in my opinion :( Still they taste very nice and that is a key factor.
THE END!We pack up our 30 macarons (10 of each flavor) in Lenotre's elegant bags and boxes. Ideally the macs need more rest overnight in the frig for their flavor to deepen and to look shiny. They will keep 5-6 days and in the freezer 2-3 months! You'd have to have great restraint to manage that...Hmmm
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