Day 3: The One with the Vegans

Not to disappoint you but there were no actual vegans in the area, however there were lots of vegan macarons! Today we began advanced macarons, which included vegan and nut free pastries. It was an interesting class as the main ingredients in really good pastries are eggs, butter, and milk which are all very much not vegan. So many people go into vegan patisserie thinking that they will taste bad or the texture will be all wrong, although this was not the case.

We first started with plain vegan macaron shells, this consisted of trading out the egg whites for potato starch and water. This was interesting as the meringue that was created without egg whites whipped up the exact same. It was actually faster and came out more marshmallowy. We then folded this in with the sugar and almond flour and piped them to bake. These macarons do need to set like the french macarons needed to but they take way less time about 5-10min.

We then went to nut free macarons, which we decided to use the vegan meringue base for again. So in this case we replaced the almond flour with oat flour. It worked about the same way except it was a looser batter that spread a bit more than a regular macaron batter. Tasting these macaron shells there is a bit of an oatmeal taste at the end but still a good substitute for anyone allergic to nuts.

Next we moved to fillings and made three different ones. We made a mango white chocolate ganache with a lime pâte de fruit for the center. We also made a coconut milk chocolate ganache for the white macaron shells not shown, and a dark chocolate ganache for the pink shells. The pink shells were covered with a sprinkling of dried dragon fruit just for fun!

Lastly below I have included an image of all the different macarons we have made over the past two days (minus the white macarons as they were not chilled yet). Also we got our chef whites today, and although I stayed in my apron today you may see me in a nice white coat soon!