Macarons…

Last week Thursday I attended my first cooking course in Genève – making Macarons!  I was a bit worried about the course for 2 reasons, 1) the course was conducted in French (and as we know my French is very limited) and 2) Macarons are notoriously difficult to perfect.  However I was also excited because 1) I love sweet things and 2) I was attending the course with 2 lovely friends.



Ready to attempt the Macaron course



So what are Macarons?  Well as far as I can remember I do not think I ever had them in South Africa, although I am sure you can find them.  I saw them in England but since coming to Genève they are everywhere.   Macarons are a sweet treat made with a meringue mixture combined with almond powder and icing sugar. Food colouring can be added to produce different colours.  Once the Macarons are cooked they are sandwiched together with a flavoured filling in the middle. The filling can really be any flavour you like but is usually a jam or buttercream  type filling.

The course was held at Katrepices, The Cosy Cooking Factory (http://www.katrepices.com/cours.php).  Katrepices gives a number of courses at lunch, midday and in the evening and the type of course on offer changes regularly and in the evening you cook a 3 course meal.  Our course was a midday course starting at 15h00 till 17h00.



Katrépices where the course was held



There were 12 of us on the course and we were all positioned around a central cooking area with the Chef on the one side explaining the process.  There were four different ‘stations’ as we were going to make four flavours and colours of Macaron, so we worked in teams. 

The Chef started by making the meringue (which was very complicated and involved heating a sugar and water syrup to exactly 115 degrees).  This was left to beat for about 20 minutes while we continued with the rest of the process. 

We started making the fillings. Our group was making a cherry jam filling. So we blitzed some cherries and added pectin and boiled till it was syrupy.  We then added sugar and boiled some more.  We then poured the mixture into a flat tray and put it in the fridge to cool. 



Making our jam



Ready to be put into the fridge to set

The other groups all made fillings with a white chocolate and cream base. The fillings were vanilla, liquorice and Chartreuse (which is a herbal type liquor).   



Cutting up the white chocolate



We mixed the icing sugar and almond power adding a little food colouring depending on the station we were working at.  We added some red colouring which was to compliment our cherry jam.  The other groups made green, grey and white mixtures.  Lastly we added the egg whites. We spent a long time mixing this together by hand.

Mixing the red



more mixing...



Mixing the green



Taking turns



Once the meringue mixture was ready we added this to the coloured mixture and once again mixed it really well to ensure a smooth shiny Macaron. 



How the meringue mixture should look



Adding the meringue mixture to the coloured mixture



More mixing

Then we started piping the mixture onto baking sheets and the aim was to make circles of the same size according to the template.  This proved very tricky and the result was a lot of laughs and variety of circle sizes (but the taste is the same anyway). 



Piping the mixture



The Chef keeping an eye on our work



While the Macarons were baking (which is another very technical process as steam needs to be released from the oven at various stages) we continued with the filling.  Our jam was setting nicely.

The Macarons eventually came out of the oven.



Pink



Grey



White



Green



Once the Macarons were cooled enough we started the process of adding the filling. The pink Macarons went with our jam filling, the liquorice filling went with the grey Macarons, the white Macarons went with the vanilla filling and the green Macarons went with the Chartreuse filling.



Concentration while adding the filling



Adding filling



Our first pink Macaron with cherry jam in the centre



Looking good



Our group



Leftovers used to create a multi-coloured Macaron



Adding some toffee to the vanilla Macarons



All in all it was a really fun afternoon.  The French was not too bad and I understood most of what was said, although there was some translation involved when needed.  The other people on the course were friendly and the Chef was very friendly, helpful and knowledgeable.

The course reaffirmed that making Macarons are tricky and I am not sure when I will be brave enough to try them at home as everything needs to be so precise.  I would recommend this course (which costs CHF 75) and I would definitely consider doing another of their courses in the future (although some of the evening courses are quite pricey). 

At the end we all got a box of Macarons to take home with us.  And even if I have to say so myself, they did not look too bad for beginners...



Our packages to take home



Looks good...



Tastes great!