Sur la Table: Dabbling in French Macarons

Last week we dedicated a whole class to French macarons, this year’s new trend coming off the cupcake frenzy last year. From my observation, macarons haven’t created as much of a commotion as cupcakes, but nevertheless they are equally as fascinating to experiment with and taste.

Coconut macaron with rum cream filling

If you are not familiar with a French macaron, you may notice from above that it is not the coconut-covered mound most people think is a macaron. It’s quite the opposite in texture. They are delicate, airy, slightly crisp shells that sandwich a cream filling. The most exciting thing about macarons are the different combinations you can try. My two personal favorites so far: chocolate macaron with passionfruit filling, raspberry macaron with pistachio filling

Macaron Menu:

• coconut macaron with rum cream filling
• raspberry macaron with raspberry jam filling
• green tea macaron with green tea cream filling
• french vanilla macaron with chocolate ganache
• chocolate macaron with chocolate custard cream

I assisted with the green tea macarons. For the students we had guides beneath the silpats to ensure all of the macarons were piped the same size. You want to pipe them on a silpat or parchment paper to ensure they come off.

A full sheet that looks a bit alien green to me, but luckily after baking they were more pale in color. The green tea flavor comes from using matcha green tea powder which you can find at a local Asian market.

A sheet with half green tea and half raspberry. I like the color combination together. It’d be a cute baby shower theme- lime and pink.

Here are the green tea ones filled. The students were a little skimpy on the cream. I would have put more 🙂

A close up on the raspberry macarons. Sorry a little fuzzy. The buttercream filling was amazing. The tartness of the cream balanced went well with the sweetness of the shells.

The chocolate macarons waiting to go in the oven.

Filled with the chocolate custard. Sigh I can remember it so clearly. It was like a little delicate chocolate souffle bite, specially when eaten warm. We couldn’t really wait for them to cool.

Coconut macarons cooling. I was very excited that they had the little feet (the ridges at the bottom).

Filled with rum cream. A little too strong for me but the combination with the coconut was heavenly. By far my favorite from the class.

Vanilla bean macarons filled with chocolate custard cream.

As you can see there weren’t many done ones to photograph. We kept tasting them. I probably ate 10 and did not feel too well after the major sugar overload. However I would absolutely do it again for the sake of trying more macarons.

This is a good class to take to learn the technique for macarons. In general, they are temperamental so don’t get discouraged if they don’t come out perfect the first time.