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 :)
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