Day 2: The One with the Macarons

Wow what a day! Today we began the true baking lessons with two different types of macarons, Italian and French. I did not know there were two different ways to make macarons so this was a brand new lesson for me. I have also never made macarons at home due to the fact of not wanting to invest in almond flour, but I will definitely be trying them when I get back. Below I have gone through the difference between the two types of macaron shells.

French Macaron	Italian Macaron
– Uncooked egg whites – Need set/dry time	– Uncooked and cooked egg whites – Can be placed straight into the oven

While there aren’t a ton of differences, cooking the egg whites in sugar makes a difference in the silkiness of the batter. Cooking the eggs in the sugar also helps the macaron stiffen and is the reason why it does not need to set and become dry before baking. We made one set of french macarons but due to the humidity and how cold the shop is, they were not drying so we did not cook very many of them. The ones we did cook became very hollow in the middle, making them technically incorrect.

The Italian macarons came out the best as they worked better in the cold environment and didn’t get effected by the humidity. Some of the shells did hollow or flatten but that could be due to multiple people piping or over setting or the oven heat or a thousand other things. So many different variables can ruin macarons its never an easy fix.

We made two different types of fillings, the green macarons had a pistachio white chocolate ganache and cherry gel in the center. The yellow macarons were filled with a passion fruit caramel. Both were delicious but I do think the passion fruit could have been a little more on the tart side as I think macarons are very sweet.

Tomorrow we will be going into more macarons trying out vegan and nut free options. Supposedly the claim is that both of these options are just as good as regular macarons but I will be the judge of that.