Mad, Mad, Mad Mama and Macarons

Dropping a kid off at college is never easy.  Anxiety, sadness and excitement mixed with a good dose of jet lag have all the makings for a Maternal Meltdown.  The only thing keeping me from throwing my arms around my son and screeching, “You are too young to do this!  You can’t go to school in England and leave your mother!” was the unbridled joy he was exhibiting at the prospect of doing just that.

I could not come undone in London, so I decided to make macarons.

Cooking and running are my go-to “Bring Me Down From The Roof” remedies.  I knew I was going to get plenty of running in London going up and down the Thames, but I wanted to make sure I doubled up on my “meds”, so that meant a cooking class.  I scheduled a macaron making pastry class at L’atelier des Chefs for the day after our arrival.  Learning to make macarons seemed like the perfect “happy” culinary lesson.  I mean, what isn’t there to like?  They are colored like Easter eggs, they are almost (but not quite) obnoxiously sweet, and they seemed like something that would require my full attention.  Read: I would not have any brain cells left to fret about my soon-to-be-across-the-globe son.

There were a lot of class offerings at L’atelier des Chefs.  I briefly contemplated a “Pub Food” class, but the thought of spending three hours making stuff that I didn’t really like to eat just made me sadder.  There were also boozy classes – classes with beer and wine pairings – but I knew adding alcohol to my sorrow would be like pouring gin on a grease fire.  So, macaron making it was.

And it was perfect.  The instructor, Justin, was just the right mix of mean (I told you to stop stirring that!) and devil-may-care (Of course it’s perfectly fine to have a cocktail at ten in the morning! – said while he enjoyed a nice dark ale).  While I wisely abstained from the morning cocktail, his beer swilling told me the class would be anything but stuffy.  Perfect.

There were six of us and the chef instructor, the ideal number.  We would have been an odd man out but I bullied cajoled my son, Spencer into coming with me.  He had no interest, but when he realized his only other option was to go with Tim and Grant to take care of some details at Grant’s new school, he decided the cooking class would at least yield something delicious at the end.  And maybe he was secretly hoping for a cocktail, who knows?  Anyway, having him there made the numbers even, which was a good thing because we did much of the work with a partner.  And while he made sure to never be my partner (just because he came with me didn’t mean he had to pretend to know me), it was really nice to have him there.  I don’t know if I could have handled being abandoned by both children at once (Yes, I know that will result in a therapy moment if either of them read it, but there it is.).

After the basic instructions of how things were going to proceed (and the offering of cocktails) we got right down to business: going over the ingredients, the equipment, and the necessary translations for the two Americans in the room (icing sugar = powdered sugar; caster sugar = granulated sugar) just in case we were dolts.  Soon, we were busy mixing almond flour and icing sugar (see above) and then aggressively beating egg whites.  When it came time to fold it all together, we were all a little heavy handed.  This is where the yelling came into play.  We stopped folding.  After he stopped yelling, we commenced stirring again, and he yelled at us again.  I was sort of shocked.  I thought all Brits were calm, cool, and uber polite.  And for the rest of the trip this proved to be true.  But Justin clearly was the exception and I loved it.  I felt right at home.  In every cooking class I’ve taken in the States, the chef instructor seems to spend almost as much time yelling at us as he does teaching us things.

After we regained Justin’s affection, we moved to piping out the little macaron shells.  This involved a piping bag, some 360 degree arm swinging (to get the dough firmly lodged into the bottom of the piping bag), and precision.  I suck at precision.  So, when it came my turn to demonstrate my exceptional baking skills as the whole class watched, I shook like a drunk.  Dang.  They were just little cookies.  I was not performing brain surgery on Einstein.  Why was I so nervous?  Maybe I did need the cocktail.

Then one of the other women said, “See, Justin, you’ve scared us all to death,” with her beautiful British accent.  Everyone laughed and the tension was broken.  I finished my tray without another wobble.

Once we had all piped out a tray of shells, it was time to let them dry.  Yes, macarons, like meringues, have to dry before they are baked.  While we waited for our creations to reach the desired dry stage (matte on top), we turned our attention to the fillings.  I won’t bore you with the details, because the only important part is that we made lemon buttercream AND praline AND salted caramel AND chocolate ganache.  And we got to taste every single one while we went along (the English seem significantly less uptight about sticking their fingers into pots and licking them).  All the fillings were heavenly.

When it was time to put the shells in the oven, Justin told us that we needed to put a rolled up paper towel in the oven door to keep it slightly ajar, a technique I’ve never seen or heard before (is this another example of our “uptightness” here in the US – beware of all fire hazards like sticking a rolled up paper towel into an oven?).  Apparently, a closed oven generates steam, and since macarons need to bake dry, you keep the oven door slightly open to allow the steam to escape.  Who knew?  Maybe all of you did, and I’ve been living under a culinary rock, but I’ve never seen Ina or Martha prop open their oven door with a rolled up sheet of Bounty.

After fifteen minutes, and the offer of another cocktail, our shells were done.  Out came six trays of Peep-colored discs.  And they were beautiful.  We all stared at them proudly, like we had just invented a new food group, and there may have even been a little clapping.  We moved them onto parchment paper and let them cool (Was there a third cocktail offered, here?  I don’t remember, but it would fit with past history).

Luckily, macaron shells cool quickly and we were onto the icing – really, the reason we were all there, let’s be honest.  Again, Justin demanded perfection.  He was having no part of us just squirting on the icing and capping off the cookie.

“You must ice from directly over the center.  If your icing is lopsided, your macaron will be uneven.”

This is harder than it sounds.  When you have a whole sheet pan filled with shells, trying to get directly over each one takes a little bit of flexibility, and if you’re short, a stepladder.

As one person exactly ringed the bottom shell with the perfect amount of the appropriate  icing  – lemon buttercream for the yellow; salted caramel for the lavender; chocolate ganache for the pink; and praline for the green – (I’m sweating just typing this) our partner would delicately “screw” on the top.  Screwing it on, rather than just putting it on, ensured that the icing would distribute evenly.  Whew.

At the end, we were all rewarded with a white box with eight perfect (in the eyes of the beholder) multicolored macarons.  I almost cried.  It was so worth getting yelled at by Justin.  When I bake stuff, I’m so loosey goosey that I always end up with a delicious creation that bears almost no resemblance to the picture in the recipe.  This time, the macarons looked exactly like something from a magazine.  And if it takes yelling to get that, I’m all for it.

By the time we were done creating our masterpieces, I felt giddy.  The rush of creating something that two hours before seemed completely impossible had temporarily lifted my dread at leaving my son in London.  And while it was a temporary high (I started crying the minute I saw him again), it reminded me that eventually I would be okay; that there were still things in this world I loved to do, challenges that I would want to undertake, and new horizons to conquer.  Nothing would ever compare to the joy I’ve had raising my sons, but there will be new adventures around the corner.  And some may involve yelling and cocktails at ten in the morning.

 

Macarons

(adapted from L’atelier des Chefs and Martha Stewart)

 

For the shells:

1 cup powdered sugar

¾ almond flour

2 large egg whites at room temperature

¼ tsp. cream of tartar

¼ cup granulated sugar

Desired food coloring

Piping bag

 

For the filling:

 

2 cups powdered sugar

1 cup softened unsalted butter

Zest from ½ lemon

Zest from ½ orange

Juice from ½ lemon

Juice from ½ orange

Piping bag

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Sift together the almond flour and the powdered sugar.  In a separate bowl, whisk egg whites together until foamy.  Add cream of tartar and mix until soft peaks form, then slowly add the sugar.  Mix until stiff peaks form and mixture is shiny and smooth.

Gently fold sugar and flour mixture into egg whites, just turning over until smooth – about 20 folds.  Do not over mix.  Add food coloring and gently mix in until color is even.

Fill the contents of a piping bag with the dough and make sure it is tightly packed at the bottom.  Snip off the tip.  Standing directly above the baking pan, squeeze out the dough into a round disk about 1 inch in diameter.  This can best be accomplished by holding the piping bag still and letting the dough spread as out in a circle as you squeeze the bag.

After you have created all the shells, lift and drop the baking pan several times to force out any air bubbles.  Let shells air dry for 20 minutes or until they are dry to the touch (no longer sticky).

Place pan in the oven and cook for 15 minutes, rotating once halfway through the baking time.  Shells are done when they lift easily off the pan.  Let shells cool on the pan to continue baking while preparing the icing.

 

Icing

Cream together the powdered sugar and butter.  Add the zest and juice and mix well.

Put into piping bag and repeat piping procedure from above on half of the shells.  Cap the iced shell with a plain shell top.

Enjoy!

 

Tagged as: Cooking, cooking classes, empty nest, L'Atelier des Chefs, macaron recipe, motherhood