The Emerald Foodie Gal : Cooking Class

This morning I took a Macaron Workshop class at Chicago's The Chopping Block. I've never made Macarons before. I've always had a fascination with them. They're petite meringue-based confection often with a ganache in between. Earlier, French macarons were just made out of almond flour, sugar and egg whites. It was until the early 20th century did they get sandwiched together. Now they come in tons of different flavors, colors and fillings! This was not easy peasy. There were a lot of things you need to remember and I could see this taking a while to make. I wouldn't mind trying them again when I have more time on my hands. I would like a nice KitchenAid mixer and a fine flour mesh sifter...

For class we made Lemon Macarons with White Chocolate Lemon Ganache, Toasted Coconut Crunch Macarons with Salted Caramel Filling, & Chocolate Macarons with Raspberry Jam and Coffee Butter-cream.

I think making the lemon macarons was the easiest. The chocolate ones were my favorite. Most of the class favored the coconut maracrons because of the salted caramel. How do you say caramel? Do you say it like "car-ml" or "carra-mel"? I remember taking a NY Times quiz least year over linguistics in the United States. I found it on the archives and re-took it. I got the same results. My accent is from Grand Rapids, Detroit and Toledo. But I know the Illinois way of saying aunt has rubbed off on me to a certain degree. Growing up, I'd say aunt as in "ant". While Wayne says aunt as in "Ahh-nt." Of course I call a carbonated beverage "pop" as most Michigander's do.

One of the questions was about "Devils Night" or as some call it Mischief Night. In Detroit, the day before Halloween is called Devil's Night because there was a serious vandalism and arson problem in the 1970's and 1990's. I remember when my older brother was in Boy Scouts, they would go to the elementary school to guard it from vandals.

Anyway, here are some tips/tricks I learned:

Macarons are delicate and you don't want the cookie portion to have any cracks in it and the shell to be crisp. Yet you want the inside to be chewy. The major ingredients for the cookies are: almond flour, powdered sugar, egg whites, granulated sugar and flavoring.
How you combine the ingredients is important. Keep almond meal in the freezer. There are a lot of fatty healthy oils in almond meal. Freezing the almond meal bag helps preserve those oils.
You want to put the egg mixture on top of the flour mixture rather than the opposite. When you mix, you want to make a capital J shape while turning the bowl around. The batter should be smooth and shiny and when you lift up your spatula it should fall off like a ribbon, and not clumps.
For piping out the batter, you want to shove the plastic bag into the tip, this way the batter won't drip everywhere.
You need to let the macarons dry before putting them into the oven. They should have a plastic feeling to them once they are dry.
Egg whites need to be perfectly clear of yolks and be at room temperature. They whip up better at the temperature. If you have any fat from the egg yolk in your batter it'll ruin it.
In France, they leave the egg whites out all the time in the open. That's because their health laws are different over there.
Double pan the macarons before you put them in the oven that way it doesn't burn the bottom of the cookies. Put at 400 degrees in the middle of the oven and rotate the pan.
When making caramel, you DO NOT want to stir the sugar. Sugar is granulated and will try to keep it's crystallized form. You want to let it darken up in the water until it turns a dark brown around the sides. You should be able to smell the caramel. Then when you add the butter and heavy cream, it'll bubble up and thicken on it's own.