ATELIER DES CHEFS

La Durée and Pierre Hermé have both made the macaroon a successful cake around the world, offering different flavours and colours. I really like those sweet circular cakes and have always thought they were complicated to do until I cooked my first macaroons at l'Atelier des Chefs.

L'Atelier des Chefs UK has two school in London, one near Oxford Circus and the other one near St.Paul's. I went to the one near St.Paul's on Foster Lane for a two hour class.

I have never been to a cooking class before, it was the first time.
I really liked the place, kitchen had all the most modern tools and accessories you wish to have in your own house . 
In the school there is also a small shop that sells kitchen equipment and some food elements like food colouring (very useful in the macaroon recipe you will see below).

It was a nice way to spend a Saturday morning, learning something new. I succeeded with my macaroon so it was a total success. I look forward to reproduce the recipe pretty soon in my flat... just hope I will get the same result with my 'unprofessional' oven and my manual wisk.

On that day it was an mixed group of men and women, some of them came alone or with friends. People were all nice in this session.
I was probably the youngest one but it wasn't a problem, we all had the same level (never cooked macaroon in the past). 

The chef was nice and professional, it was very easy to understand all steps and he helped everyone for the piping method. 

On the day 12 people attended the macaroon class, 4 people per table, each table a different coloured macaroon: orange, pink and blue.  My table had orange.

The chef started the class by introducing himself, then he explained the first step we had to do to start cooking our macaroon. 

First step was to prepare the mixture:
Sift the ground almonds and the icing sugar together.
Whisk the egg whites until white are fluffy and then add the caster sugar to the the egg whites and continue whisking until you have stiff, glossy peaks.
Fold the ground almonds and icing sugar into the meringue mixture. 
Cut and fold the mixture with a spatula until all of the dry ingredients are incorporated and the mixture is smooth, shiny and has reached the ribbon stage.
Carefully add the food colouring making sure not to overwork the mixture. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag.

It was so easy to do this step at l'Atelier, they had a great food processor. I think it will take more time for me to do it manually with my kitchen disk. 

Next step was probably the most complicated one of the class: to pipe the macaroon correctly to be sure they have a flat surface after cooking. 
After making a few of them, I started to get the correct movement and right size.

Pipe 2cm circles in straight lines across a baking sheet lined with a silicon paper. Leave a 1 cm gap between each macaroon shell. Drop the tray of macaroons onto the work surface from about 30 cm to remove any large air bubbles.

Allow the macaroons to rest at room temperature for 20 minutes or until the macaroon shells are no longer sticky to touch. 

Bake in the oven for 15 minutes. If you are baking lots of macaroons you may need to keep the oven door slightly ajar (with a spoon or paper) to prevent steam building up in the oven. After 15 minutes, check the macaroons are cooked by gently lifting a macaroon at the edge of a tray. If the test macaroon does not stick, allow the tray of macaroons to finish cooking on the tray as it cools.

Allow the macaroons to cool completely before filling.

While the macaroons were rested and cooked, the chef introduced us to all the different filling for our macaroon.

We did two 'crème patissière', the first one we included pistachio paste, the second one we had strawberry jam.

Mix together the egg yolks, caster sugar and the cornflour.
Place the milk in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Once boiling, add the milk to the egg yolk mixture a little at a time. Return to the pan and whisk over a medium heat for 3-4 minutes, gently bringing it back to the boil. Place the cream in a bowl and allow to cool. Add the jam or the pistachio paste.

We also prepared a lime and fresh ginger buttercream:

Mix the butter and the icing sugar in a bowl. Zest the lime and grate the ginger. Add the lime zest and ginger to the buttercream and mix well.

The last filling on that day was the salted butter caramel:

Place the remaining 170g sugar in a heavy bottomed pan and allow to melt without stirring.
Once you have a golden caramel, add a knob of butter and the cream. Mix well then remove from the pan and allow to cool.
Place the caramel in a food processor, add the salt and mix the remaining butter in a little at a time until you have a smooth, creamy filling.

The final step was the most easy and funny one, we all have the choice to select the macaroon we wanted and covered half of them with the filling of our choice. 
I decided to try all the different filling. My favourite filling we did was the salted butter caramel and the lime and fresh ginger butter cream. I am not a big fan of crème patissière so I won't probably reproduce the two other filling. I will probably opt for a simple jam and whole fruits for the decoration. 

All French classes at L'Atelier des chefs, macaroon classes is now £64 until end of July , so don't hesitate to book it, like me you will probably be a successful chef for two hours. 

I was invited at L'Atelier des chefs.