Parisian Macaron Class Recap

On Thursday, I finally took the first step towards making one of my 2010 New Year's resolutions come true; I took a Parisian Macaron class with La Vie Douce Design.

La Vie Douce Design is the brainchild of Venus Wei, a talented pastry chef and designer in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to making delectable desserts for clients, she recently started offering classes teaching students how to make Parisian macarons among other sweets. So, together with a few wedding industry colleagues, we embarked on a fun and entertaining day at Venus' home kitchen.

Upon arriving at Venus' place, we were greeted with goodies at the tasting station, what a great start to the class!

There were three different kinds of creme brulee; lychee, ginger and espresso. I tasted the lychee one, never had this combination before, it was very good! Above the creme brulees were a new dessert created by Venus;  Meyer Lemon Curd Tart in verrine form, topped off with Chantilly cream and candied kumquat. I'm usually not a fan of lemon curd but hers was not too tart and all the elements worked really well together.

Of course, there were macarons for tasting too, there were three flavors of that as well; strawberry, mocha and chocolate-matcha. I tasted the strawberry macaron, not too sweet, perfect!

Then, there was also New York cheesecake bites with a strawberry coulis and salted caramel sauce, and vanilla panna cotta with fresh mangoes and coulis. I love the panna cotta; the slight tartness of the mangoes complemented the sweetness of the panna cotta. 

For the class, Venus provides recipes and a handy resource list so we know where to buy ingredients, baking tools and equipment. For the first half of the class, she went over a list of macaron cookbooks she recommends and showed us how we can package macarons in a variety of ways. Following that, she did a demo of making the macaron shells first, using two different methods, after which we split up into teams of two (there were six students total) and proceeded to make the macaron shells ourselves, with her guidance. My teammate Jeeryn and I decided to make chocolate macarons since the other two teams were making matcha (Peggy and Tiffany) and rose (Sophie and Jenny) macarons.

Here is Venus showing us how to fold the batter and how to pipe teddy bear macaron shells:

Here is Jeeryn piping our very first macaron shell and our sheet of finished macaron shells waiting to go in the oven:

Venus also showed us how to decorate the macaron shells, either before you bake them or after they are done baking. She also demonstrated how to make earl grey tea-infused chocolate ganache and rose buttercream as the fillings for the macarons we made (both of which I can just eat spoonfuls by themselves).

Here are our chocolate macaron shells out of the oven (with "blingy" decorations added by Venus):

Peggy and Tiffany filling their matcha macaron shells with the chocolate ganache:

Sophie and Jenny's completed rose macarons with rose buttercream, how pretty, and yummy too!

I highly recommend this class for all those who want to know how to make Parisian macarons. It is really helpful to actually watch a live instructor go through the process. Take it from me, on my very first try of making macarons, I tried to just follow a recipe in a book and ended up with cracked macaron shells. Venus is thorough in her teaching and offers lots of detailed knowledge and guidance. You also get to learn hands-on, not just by watching a demo by the instructor.

Now I cannot wait to try making macarons on my own :)