Macaroons workshop

Last night I was very fortunate to go to the first every Macaroon making class at the Waitrose Cookery School. Apparently they have often included macaroons in other classes, but never a class devoted solely to these lovely treats. Let me tell you, Waitrose have made the right decision. This two hour class was just the right amount of time to be taught and make a lovely set of pistachio macaroons with raspberry butter cream. Its proving pretty popular as the classes are booked up until Feb 2013!

I had to borrow my friend's macaroon photo, as I'm didn't come out.
But amazingly everybody's looked the same!

The Waitrose kitchens are still as lovely as I remember with plenty of kitchen space and a great demonstration theatre, even though there were 26 people in the class, it didn’t feel too cramped or too busy. As normal, you work in pairs to make and bake, and its always nice to do this with a friend!

The teacher, Eleni, was lovely and knowledgeable and we learnt from her experience so we could avoid the mistakes and get a great bunch of macaroons and everybody did! Eleni’s feeling was that it’s difficult to teach yourself how to make these meringue wonders, but once you’ve been shown how it’s easy to do again and from last night’s experience I am inclined to agree. Its certainly something I think I can reproduce at home.

The great news is macaroons are gluten free! But not sugar free – although I will be experimenting with xyltiol and Billington’s unrefined icing sugar to see if these work with the recipe.

The last couple of workshops I have done have been a few hours long, focusing on one thing / dish. And comparing these to the day long workshops I have done in the past, I must say I prefer the shorter more focused workshop, where you are more likely to get to gets with the recipe you are learning. With the all day workshops, I am prone to tiredness and information overload. These also have a tendency to run into lack of time issues. 

So far I have done workshop on sweet and savory gluten free, chocolate making, Mexican street food and macaroons. Hmmm... whatever next?