After lunch I headed back to La Cuisine for the French Macaron Class which was held in the upstairs kitchen. The class had about 8 people again, however a few students joined us late, which didn't bother me as I got to jump in a make the lemon curd for the class which is something I've been wanting to make for sometime.
We started off with the fillings for the macaron's, first was the lemon curd which you have to stir and stir and stir... and stir which was quite tiresome, but a great work out for your arm. Another student made the vanilla cream and once they ready we tipped them into a tray and were covered with cling film to stop them from getting a skin across the top while we made the macarons.
We started off with the fillings for the macaron's, first was the lemon curd which you have to stir and stir and stir... and stir which was quite tiresome, but a great work out for your arm. Another student made the vanilla cream and once they ready we tipped them into a tray and were covered with cling film to stop them from getting a skin across the top while we made the macarons.
Next we had to made our sugar syrup which has to be heated to exactly 118 degrees Celsius. I forgot to ask but I think they were using meat thermometers which is the same as the one I have at home, so I might cross of candy thermometer from my wish list.
We then added the sugar syrup to the meringue mixture and continued to beat the mixture until the bottom of the bowl was room temperature which seemed to take ages, but then again we had just added piping hot sugar.
While the egg white and syrup mixture was still beating we made combined the remaining ingredients including the main ingredient ground almond. Then we had to make biggest decision... what colour to make our macarons!!!
I went with blue.
The next step was folding the meringue into the mixture and luckily for me one of the students that came in late and was paired with me, which meant we could take turns at folding in the mixture. For such dainty treats, they certainly need a lot of muscle.
Once the mixture looks like this and falls of the spoon with the right "plop" then its ready to pipe.
The Kiwi mum and daughter next to me seemed to know what they were doing, so I took a few photo of their red macarons (just in case they were better than mine) and the contrast of colours was great too.
You can see here my consistency of size is a bit out, practice makes perfect.
After some practice, these were my final baked batch and I managed to find a few of similar size to match up.
It will be a test to see if I can get them this good looking at home, hopefully even better.
We then lined up as many matching cases as we could and piped into them the lemon curd and vanilla cream.
These were the Kiwi mum and daughters red macaroons, they were perfect.
After we were done all the macaron's from the class were devided evenly so we each had a box of colourful macarons to take home... or to a music festival which serves as a great snack after to dancing to disco at 2am.
Happy Baking x
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