Pastry Chef School: Macarons, Crepes Suzette
This week in pastry school we baked a dozen flavours of macarons, cooked Crêpes Suzette and went on a field trip to local famous bakery Craftsman & Wolves.
These Balsamic Macarons were delicious. The filling is a ganache made from 5:3:1:1 ratio white chocolate : cream : cocoa butter and balsamic vinegar. The higher quality the balsamic the better the overall flavour. The paint on top is natural purple food color mixed in with a bit of vodka and hand painted with a brush.
These Lime-Chili Macarons Macarons were great. The filling is a ganache using a ratio of 10:8:1 white chocolate : cream : lime juice with infused lime zest and and espelette chili.
These Coffee Macarons tasted amazing. The filling was a ganache made from 1:1 white chocolate : cream. The cream was infused with ground coffee beans so the quality and roast on the beans is super important. And for garnish on the top of the macarons we sprinkled some poppy seeds before baking.
These Lemon-Almond Macarons were great. I love lemon. The ganache is made by heating up cream, lemon sugar and eggs in a baine marie to 180°F, cooling to 140°F, and emulsifying a ton of salted butter using an immersion blender for 10 minutes. Once that’s ready we added in some ground almonds.
The paint on top is gold lusterdust mixed with vodka sprinkled on top with a toothbrush.
These Strawberry Macarons tasted great. It’s just boiled strawberries, stabilized with more pectin-sugar, more sugar, glucose, lemon juice and citric acid cooked to 218°F. That whole mixture gets emulsified with milk chocolate.
These Lemon-Basil Macarons taste great. It’s a mixture of 6:6:4:1 ratio eggs : sugar : Lime juice & zest : basil syrup heated up to 180°F in a baine marie, combined with gelatin with an immersion blender for 10m and then we added ground almonds.
Making the basil syrup was interesting. We boiled basil for 5m, drained, heated up with simple syrup to 140°F and then pureed.
Baking Macarons is the scourge of pastry chef since forever. Here’s how we made them:
- Pulse 300g 10x + 300g almond flour in a robocue until fine for 10s.
- Hydrate flour: Combine with 110g of aged egg whites with in a kitchen aid. Add color.
- Make Italian Meringue: Cook 300g sugar+75g water to 240°F and make italian meringue by drizzling into another 110g of whipped aged egg whites to soft peaks.
- Combine: In two 20%-80% additions fold italian meringue into flour mixture.
- Pipe consistent sized cookies on silpat or parchment paper.
These Crêpes Suzette are everything you’d hope decadent french cuisine to be. Here’s how we made them:
- Make a loose crepe batter. Whisk dry & wet together with an immersion blender and let rest for 15m. Cook crepes in hot non-stick pan.
- Make Orange Butter: whip 227g butter until emulsified with 50g sugar, 50g grand mernier, lemon juice, orange juice and orange zest.
- Assemble: With an offset spatula make a half circle on the bottom half of each crepe using the orange butter 1cm away from the edges. Fold twice to a quarter circle.
- Baste in Orange Butter: take a bunch of orange butter and baste assembled crepes in it until warm.
- Flambe in grand mernier. Use a ladle that’s been set on fire first and then add to pan. See side video .
- Plate: remove crepe suzette, use pan sauce as plate sauce, sprinkle with 10x sugar.
To wrap off our week we had a Field trip to famous local bakery Craftsman & Wolves. Chef William Werner shared lots of awesome stuff. First, I love his approach of making each step in a recipe reproducible and then programming those steps into ovens. That’s such a pro-bakery move. I also love that their kitchen went through multiple iterations and changes every few months.
Two mindblowing moments for me:
- Gold dust from a shaker. I love putting 24k gold leaf on desserts. But working with gold leaf sheets is a pain. They use a gold leaf shaker. *mindblown*
- They have a convection oven that you put an entire rack into it, it lifts it up and spins it around. No more spinning sheet trays. See video on the side. *mindblown*
Read more about my pastry school adventures by reading about last week’s sugar confections:
