"France" by Faith?

Learning to make macarons

Hello to all after a long silence, for which I apologize.

Pick any reason: COVID, supply chain, war in Europe, 5-month sojourn working in Berlin, COVID, COVID, COVID.

France by Faith was originally meant to include small, bespoke tours of my favorite places in this wonderful, exciting, exasperating, beautiful country.

And then . . . came the pandemic. And the end of travel for a long while.

The pandemic, as many of you know, I not only have experienced along with everyone else, but also I work on the issue by day. COVID by day, COVID by night!

And COVID was only the latest in a long series of emergencies: Ebola, Zika, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the H1N1 pandemic, which wasn’t much of a pandemic at all, thank goodness. But it still provided a crazy amount of work, meetings, reports, you name it.

Don’t get me wrong; I am happy and grateful to be fully employed. I am lucky and I know it.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

FbF, whether it’s actually in FRANCE or not, will be coming to you regularly again from now on! Thanks to as-yet-unmet friend Jennifer Bew Orr for giving this non-writing writer a bop upside the head ;-)

Here’s a fun thing to do in Paris: learn to make macarons!

Of course, no one who lives in France would ever remotely consider MAKING macarons, since amazing ones are available at so many good bakeries. But I thoroughly enjoyed learning how to turn out these delicious bites.

Nonetheless, a few months ago, friend Bernie and I zipped up on the train to take a class at La Cuisine Paris.

Mes amis, let me tell you, this is not your ordinary cooking class. This is le top!

Our teacher was French-American and had studied at crazy-great places. He was such a good instructor. So organized. Everything prepped and at the ready, just like in a top restaurant kitchen.

There is a RHYTHM to making macarons and a few tricks. It’s the kind of thing you would have to do over and over again to get it right—by which I mean, consistent. Even the wonky ones were delicious.

One trick is that you have to lean directly over the piping bag/cookie sheet. And then there’s this little twist/lift action at the very end.

And, of course, we got to take home a big box of our efforts. TIP: the ones with chocolate AND salted caramel filling were THE BEST. [UPDATED NOTE: Check out these ideas, which look fun and creative.]

I was obviously a bit giddy and overcome when the class was over ;-)

Highly recommended, fun activity! The school has other courses, including baguettes and other specialties of the boulangerie. I might have to try one or two more.