Mad as a Hatter for Marvellous Macaroons Part I

I hope that everyone has been busy attending food events and experimenting with new ingredients and recipes! So, what have I been doing with myself? Since the Chocolate Unwrapped Show, I have attended the BBC Good Food Show Winter in Birmingham, tasted top grade coffee in Panama, eaten the best slices of pizza in New York City, overindulged at Christmas time with plenty of Brussels sprouts and celebrated Burns Night with haggis, neeps and tatties! However, this post will be focused on my most recent culinary adventure…a baking one.

Bocas Blended: a unique snack bar I visited in Panama.

One of the most exciting presents I received at Christmas was a cooking experience at L’atelier des Chefs in London. This cookery school, based on Wigmore Street in central London, was created in 2004 by French brothers Nicolas and Francois Bergerault. The brothers wanted to rekindle the French’s passion for cooking by opening the original school in Paris and they now have twelve other cookery schools in France, Belgium, Dubai and London.

The gift was a two-hour ‘All about...’ cookery class that taught you four recipes about a particular ingredient, type of food or cuisine of your choice. As a joint present with a friend, Anna, we decided to book the ‘Marvellous Macaroons’ class to brush up on our baking skills. Macaroons are meringue based cookies that usually contain ground almonds and have a variety of fillings. They are typically brightly coloured and have a melt in your mouth texture that makes them unique compared to other patisserie treats.

After putting on some dashing plastic aprons, we were greeted by our chef, Fabricio Cano Davila. As an accomplished chef, Fabricio worked in Michelin-starred restaurants including Devos Belgium before beginning to teach his craft in London cookery schools. The class was completely hands-on and we created dozens of macaroons with four different fillings under the instruction and support of the chef who demonstrated techniques at each stage of preparation. Overall, we successfully made pink, purple and yellow macaroons with raspberry and rose water cream, lemon buttercream, chocolate & coconut ganache and salted butter caramel fillings.

These were packaged for us to takeaway, but were promptly demolished on the journey home...yum!

*Anyone who has tried to make macaroons may have found them to lose their shape during baking, but the chef provided us with valuable tips to prevent this, including:
- Do not overwork the initial meringue and almond mix as this removes the air that makes them light and airy.
- Use powder food colouring as liquid affects the consistency of the macaroon mixture and can make them flat.

And onto a Mad Hatter...(See Part II)