In preparation for National Macaron Day this Sunday, I fulfilled a lifelong dream of creating my own French meringue-based confections. The enabler: Savor Pâtisserie. After a friend tipped me off to their macaron making classes last month, I was dead set on getting into one, mostly because I love eating macarons, and I guessed there would be a good amount of that involved, but also because I have absolutely no idea how a person would go about making them. I could barely take a stab at what ingredients you would need. So, in a way, this experience was going to be like seeing how a magic trick works. A really tasty magic trick.
Owner and Head Baker Kelli Watts greeted me at Savor’s temporary pop-up at The Shops at Park Lane (they’ll open a permanent location sometime this summer) and had all the equipment set up and ready to go. I could go into extreme detail about how we constructed the macaron shells and all the intense measuring involved in the process, but A) that’s kind of boring and B) I don’t want to give Kelli’s secrets away. So instead, I’ll tell you a few of the things I learned about baking, myself, and why you need to get yourself to a Savor class stat.
1. How to Remove Eggshells or Yolks While Baking
Okay, this was huge for me. I’ve been forced to consume many an egg shell shard in my lifetime. When, while in class, I inevitably spilled a bit of egg yolk into our egg white mixture (spelling doom for my macarons), Kelli expertly dug it out with a broken egg shell. Apparently, shells and yolks are more likely to stick to the shell than a spoon. The more you know!
2. Macarons Are Not Meant to Be Eaten Fresh
I actually tested this out. Right out of the oven, my macarons shells were a little too hard. (Still good, but hard.) The next day, the shells and the icing had sort of congealed together as one, and tasted even better.
3. Macarons Are Not Easy to Make
This wasn’t one of those classes where you think to yourself, I could totally do this at home! I mean, you could if you really wanted to, and if you had a KitchenAid mixer and a good amount of almond flour on hand, but you would really have to want it. The measurements have to be very precise, there are a lot of visual benchmarks you need to be aware of, and you have to be somewhat proficient with a piping bag. Which made it all the more incredible that…
4. Kelli Taught Herself How to Make Macarons
I can’t with this right now. Sweet Kelli, owner of Savor, taught herself how to make macarons. Maybe my ineptitude in the kitchen makes this seem crazier than it really is, but to me this is bonkers. No culinary school stint for Kelli. No mom who owned her own bakery. Just a young woman who’d fallen in love with Ladurée’s macarons, and wanted to learn for the fun of it. Needless to say, she’s passionate about the subject, and an excellent teacher to learn from. Also, you can BYOB to her classes, which is always a good selling point for me.
Even if you don’t have time to sign up for a class this weekend, you can still stop by Savor’s pop-up to celebrate National Macaron Day on Sunday. They’ll be giving out free champagne macarons with the purchase of a gift box all day long.
