French Macarons

I absolutely love Veterans’ Day. It gives me a reason to reach out individually to each of my fellow veterans and thank them for their service, especially if their service is what brought them into my life. And it gives me an excuse to do something nice for myself that I wouldn’t normally do. This year I registered for a French macaron class on Saturday morning at the local cooking school, because it was half price and because my favorite chef instructor was teaching it.

What is a French Macaron?

A French macaron is a very delicate pastry that is usually composed of two meringue cookies filled with ganache, buttercream, or jam. The meringue cookies are usually made with almond flour to give them some more structure, and with some type of flavoring. Sometimes food coloring is added to make them visually stunning in addition to incredibly delicious.

Making the Macaron

On the menu at the cooking school was a Pecan Pie Macaron with a Caramel Buttercream filling and a Gingersnap Macaron with a Pumpkin Brandy Buttercream. Since there were exactly eight of us, the chef instructor split us into two groups to make the macaron batter. I was in the group to make the gingersnap macaron.

Technically, making a macaron starts with preparing the mise en place, which is the fancy way of saying getting all your stuff together before you start making the meringue. Since we were at the cooking school, the mise en place was taken care of for us. But looking at the recipe, a fair amount of work went into that. They had to weigh out – not volume measure – the confectioners’ sugar and almond flour, pulse it in a food processor until fine, pulse in the spices, and then sift the mixture into a bowl. They also had to separate out the yolks from the whites and leave the whites out to come to room temperature before we started on the meringue. (The chef instructor gave us a tip on how to speed that process up by putting the unbroken eggs in hot water, but I forgot exactly how that worked.) But you definitely need the mise en place complete before beginning the meringue because things go quickly once the meringue is ready.

Once the mise en place is complete, you can begin making the meringue. Another advantage of being at the cooking school was having fancy equipment to work with. A good meringue is about patience and knowing what right looks like. Basically, making a meringue just requires letting the mixer beat the egg whites and a few ounces of sugar at a very high speed until it reaches the proper consistency. When I thought out meringue was done, our chef instructor looked over and told us it had at least another two minutes to go! A proper meringue, it turns out, looks a little dry, balls up around the whisk, and will hold a stiff peak.

After the meringue is perfect, the wet colorings and flavorings are gently folded into the meringue. We used a touch of brown color and a touch of copper color, but no additional flavorings, such as vanilla extract. These don’t have to be completely mixed in yet because there will be plenty of folding to come. Then only one-third of the dry ingredients get sifted over the meringue and folded into it. The chef instructor recommended the following technique for folding in the dry ingredients: scrape around the edge of the bowl, then cut through the center of the bowl. She recommended undermixing at this point. Once the first third of the dry ingredients had been sifted into the meringue, then the second third could be sifted and folded, followed by the final third. After all the dry ingredients had been folded into the meringue, check the batter for proper consistency by taking a large blob of the batter on the spatula and dropping it back into the bowl. If the batter ribbons back into the bowl, it is the proper consistency for piping. If it just drops into the bowl, it could use a little bit more folding. But be careful not to overmix it!

After the batter reaches the proper consistency, it is loaded into large piping bags. Yes, we learned how to pipe the macarons! And we didn’t use piping tips because those tend to get lost in the piping bag. Again, being at the cooking school, we had the advantage of using silpats with preprinted circles on them, but the chef instructor gave us paper templates to use under parchment paper or silpats for piping macarons to the perfect size at home. Piping a macaron is very straightforward: you hold the piping bag almost vertical in the center of the circle just barely above the silpat and gently squeeze until the batter almost fills the circle. Then swipe sideways to break contact. The batter will expand slightly on a slipat to fill the circle (not so much on parchment paper).

The meringues have to dry for 30 to 45 minutes between piping and baking. The meringues bake at a relatively low heat (300F) for a short time (14 to 16 minutes). They have to be rotated halfway through the baking period to ensure even baking. The cookies are ready when the lid doesn’t jiggle.

Making the Buttercream

Making the buttercream fillings was more of a demonstration by the chef instructor than hands on by the students, but I didn’t mind because I still learned a lot.

I thought that the pumpkin brandy buttercream was pretty fascinating. I’m used to making buttercream frosting by putting two sticks of butter and a box of confectioners’ sugar in a bowl and beating the heck out of it. But this was a totally different process! She started with egg whites and white sugar in a double boiler to pasteurize the egg whites. Once the mixture reached the target temperature, she brought the bowl over to the stand mixer and whisked it up into a meringue. Then she added small chunks of butter, a few at a time, and let those fully incorporate. Once she finished adding the butter, she added a fraction of the pumpkin puree called for in the recipe – and the buttercream broke because of all the water in the puree! Fortunately, she still had her double boiler going and was able to return the buttercream to the heat to melt it some. Then she returned the semi-melted buttercream to the stand mixer and, like magic, it was beautiful and fluffy all over again! She also skipped the brandy and added only a fraction of the spices called for in the buttercream recipe because, in a previous class, the combination of the heavily spiced cookie and the heavily spiced buttercream was overpowering.

The chef instructor went completely off script to make the caramel buttercream filling. Apparently, in a previous class, they had made the caramel filling as directed in the recipe packet and it was too stiff for the fragile macaron. So she found an older recipe for a creamier caramel buttercream and further improvised on the amount of butter in the recipe. The recipe started with cooking together sugar, water, and corn syrup over medium heat until deep amber to make a basic caramel. Just like in the homemade caramel class, no stirring was allowed! Once the proper color had been achieved, the caramel was poured into the mixer bowl with the paddle attached and paddled until the metal bowl was just barely warm to the touch. Then one stick of butter – cut roughly into one inch pieces – was added and paddled until fully incorporated. The chef instructor didn’t like the look of the buttercream so she added another stick of butter – again cut roughly into one inch pieces – and paddled that until fully incorporated. The result was a silky smooth buttercream!

Assembling the Macaron

I got to play with the piping bags again when it came to assembling the macarons. The technique was very simple: hold the bottom cookie in your hand flat side up, pipe a ring of buttercream around the edge of the cookie, gently place the top cookie onto the buttercream flat side down, and twist (not press!) to seat it. Some of the other students rolled their macarons in chopped pecans, but I was a purist.

The Verdict

My macarons were delicious! Even better than the ones that I buy at Paul when I visit DC! The cookie melted in my mouth and the buttercream was incredibly luscious. Personally, I preferred the combination of the toasted pecan cookie and the caramel buttercream over the gingersnap cookie and the pumpkin buttercream. The caramel buttercream was actually my hands down favorite component of the entire class.

Making macarons was much easier than I thought it would be, although that may have been because the cooking school took care of all the prep work and provided all the proper equipment.