Macaron Class at Lenotre

  My Saturday Lenotre macaron class is held at the grand Pavillon Elysee on the Champs-Elysees. Our workstation - there are just 6 students in each macaron class held 3 X a week. Classes fill up in advance so plan ahead. The class costs 115 euros. There was a ready supply of croissants/pain au chocolat for weak moments during the 4 hour class.

Chef Eric is very correct and quite an elegant professor.The entire class is in French, but you can keep up even if your language skills are not up to snuff. A fellow student helped translate specific questions. Mostly I watched and photographed incessantly.We made 3 different flavors - lemon, caramel, chocolate.
Every single ingredientis carefully measured out and weighed on scales using the metric system. We get to do that.Quite a bit of high powered equipment is required to make macarons. This ain't chocolate chip cookies. First step after the weighing in - the sifting of the almond flour, key ingredient of macarons. The particles must be consistently the same size for nice smooth macaron shells.
Here my neighbor pours the sifted almond flour into the meringue batter of butter and egg whites. The class is a bit formal. No licking of bowls, spoons or tasting along the way either. No monkey business. Serious classwork from 9 AM until the end of class. Your Paris spy did manage to sneak a lick of the empty caramel ganache bowl in the sink when no one was looking.
Chef Eric folding the batter into the eggwhites - le macaronage. The chef does most of the important steps while we watch.He fills the pastry bag probably much more efficiently than I would have done, what with multi-licks and finger tastings.

Chef demonstrates the proper angle to form the macarons on the parchment.

We demonstrate the improper way to make the macaron coques/shells.

The shell are baked 10 minutes then turned and baked a few more minutes. Here they are coming out of the oven. Note they all have perfect 'feet' - those little ruffly edges. A macaron without proper feet is well not really a macaron.
One secret trick - each tray is placed on top of 2 other trays while baking not sitting directly on the oven racks. Macarons making entails lots of secrets not written in the printed recipe.

Another secret trick - so the lids are easily removed from the parchment - cold water is poured under the paper, then drained off immediately. The lids are set on racks to rest for 2 hours. Macarons require a lot of beauty sleep before you pop them in your mouth.

I've skipped a slew of steps like making of the filling/ ganache that goes inside the meringue 'sandwich'. Chef demonstrates the correct amount of filling for each macaron - just enough glue to hold them together. We got to wreck havoc on the rest.

Enfin the final step. The two shell come together with a twist of the wrist. Our macs do not look like they came from a patisserie. They're too puffy and plump in my opinion. Still they taste terrific and that's the key factor.

 We pack up our 30 macarons in Lenotre's elegant purple bags and boxes. Ideally macarons require an overnight rest in the fridge for their flavor to deepen and to look shiny. They'll keep 5-6 days and in the freezer 2-3 months. You'd need great restraint to manage that.