L'Atelier des Chefs, Marylebone
As usual, I’m late. Those of you who read other London food blogs have probably by now read about the Trusted Places-organized macaron-baking adventures last weekend. Trusted Places, World Foodie Guide and Eggbeater (newly transplanted from the Bay Area to London) have already done a fab job describing our class at L’Atelier des Chefs, but here are my jumbled thoughts anyway:
- I really enjoyed meeting a few of my fellow food bloggers in person, including Krista, Helen and Su-Lin, whose blogs I’ve followed for months now. For a blogger, I’m a bit of a luddite, so making the jump from Internet to real life was weird at first. After all, you read someone’s blog and you think you “know” them, and then you’re face-to-face and realize you have to introduce yourself.
- Our hosts at L’Atelier were so organized and welcoming that even though Saturday was a freebie for us, I’d be glad to return as a paying customer. The mix of demo and hands-on work was good, and L’Atelier’s facilities are gorgeous and comfortable. Although there are inexpensive, 30-minute classes available, £72 seems to be the going rate for an involved, 3-hour class like our macaron-making one. The price tag’s steep, but I’d love to go back to do a class with friends. I figure an afternoon at L’Atelier is a lot cheaper and more productive than shoe shopping at Selfridge’s around the corner.
- Even though I lack a sweet tooth, I love macarons (and not just because I’m a francophile). So when Eat Like a Girl invited me to this ‘do, I was thrilled. Based solely on taste and visuals of Pierre Herme’s macarons, I’ve always been glad to pay 1.40+ euros per crispy-chewy macaron, but now that I’ve learned how much labor goes into making those pretties, I appreciate them even more.
ingredients for rose-raspberry macarons
Working with Shuna, Mia, Niamh and Niamh’s friend Heather, I helped whip up a few dozen rose-raspberry macarons (just throw in the lychee and it’d be ispahan, no?).
The first thing I noticed was how much slow sifting went into making the almond flour fine enough for the macaron biscuits.
batter for rose-raspberry macaron biscuits
And look how seriously pink the biscuit batter was. Lurid, no?
dollops of macaron biscuit batter ready for the oven
Using a pastry bag, we tried our best to make the biscuits perfectly round. The key is to keep the bag tip stationary on the cookie tray to let the batter blob out. The other insights of the day wrt the biscuits were (1) once you’ve filled a tray with biscuit batter, you drop the tray onto your counter (with a loud thwap) to get the air bubbles out before baking; and (2) you don’t put these puppies in the oven until they’ve dried out a bit (and feel that way to the touch).
Click here, here, and here to see a few action photos of the day. (Can you tell we were all food bloggers?)
It was a fun, informative class and I stuffed myself silly with macarons. An ideal afternoon.
L’Atelier des Chefs, 19 Wigmore Street, W1 1PH, 0207 499 6580; closest tube stations: Oxford Circus or Bond Street
I’m impressed! I’ve heard over and over about how impossible it is to make good macarons and the alchemy required for success, but it looks like you were able to pull it off!
I was surprised at how much I liked the rose raspberry macarons at Claridge’s, and it seems that everyone is offering a variation on this flavor. So, a slightly obsessive question only I would ask: given that food grade rose oil (attar of rose) regularly costs in excess of £100 for a mere 5ml, and even the solvent extracted rose absolutes cost over £50 for 5 ml, what do gourmet chefs use for rose flavoring? Is it rose geranium oil (much more affordable) masquerading as rose? Or will people stoop to using artificial flavors? I’m guessing that even the staunchest purist would balk at using attar of rose to make cookies. I’m also guessing that most bottles of rose flavoring don’t divulge their secrets, unfortunately.
When I asekd about rose water during the last class I did at L’atelier des Chefs, Chef Baldwin said you could buy the inexpensive kind at most larger drug stores.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be there as it looks fab! Hopefully meet you next time
Rosewater is widely available, I’ve been through a fait few bottles myself – I just buy it in my local Sainsbury’s.
Andy, I can always count on you to leave interesting comments. So is food-grade rose oil the same as what you’d use in expensive eau de parfum? [I was just thinking that in "Deluxe, How Luxury Lost its Lustre," the author, Dana Thomas, details all the effort and quality control involved in creating rose essences for Chanel No. 5, which is what justifies the expense, apparently.]
As Krista commented, L’Atelier didn’t use the attar of rose (i.e., the expensive oil), but I think rosewater is a byproduct of making rose oil, so it’d make sense if that were a lot cheaper and more commonly used in cooking. Whatever was used in our recipie, the scent was quite subtle and imperceptible in our batter unless you were smelling for it, so I don’t think a significant quantity was used in our cooking class.
And now that Krista and Helen have pointed out you can buy rosewater in most supermarkets/drug stores, I’m curious to find them (though unlikely to cook with them anytime soon).
Much in the way that grenadine is rarely made from pomegranate, and almond extract is almost never made from almonds, many commercial rose waters have often never touched a rose. Unless the bottle says 100% pure distillate water or hydrosol, it’s probably a blend of oils diluted in water.
Either way, rose water is rarely strong enough to add much impact to anything you eat (think Turkish delight or lassis, not so rosy). I was curious to see if some of the same people that don’t flinch at buying kobe beef and fresh white truffles might be willing to go all the way to attar of rose – hey, why not?
ooh, or like vanilla extract vs vanilla flavoring – *so* different in taste (and price).
Happy to meet you too! It was good fun, wasn’t it?! Are you going to make them again? I’m seriously thinking about it for Christmas presents…
Oh Yummmm – you are so lucky to be able to partake of a wonderful class like that ! I wish I could have tasted them.
Thanks for the link!
On the rosewater note– it is of utmost importance that one buy food-grade (or nomenclature thereof) rosewater or rose oil. Rose Geranium is a great substitute, and I think has a more complex aroma and flavour than many rosewaters.
Online I found a Moroccan distributor of food grade rose oil. I have yet to use it but plan to in a pistachio frangipane pastry.
My own experience is that constant adding and tasting is how to achieve the flavour/aroma one wants with rosewater. It should not necessarily be the “front” flavour, but the back one, like a slightly out of focus background behind a more prominent portrait.
thanks for sharing the fruits of your labour! the salted caramel was my fave!
Su-Lin: Yes, it was fun, and I saw that TrustedPlaces has now put up video footage of the day. yikes. I’ll be very impressed if you bake these for Christmas. I’d do it again only if (a) I were using someone’s big, suburban kitchen; and (b) I had 16 people to feed and help.
Loving Annie: I was glad and lucky, too, to be part of the macaron-baking class. It’s one of those things that I would never have had the patience to read about, so learning in person was ideal.
Shuna: Good to know that rose geranium is a fair substitute for attar of rose, and I have to say that Andy really set off quite a chain of comments on this post with his slightly-obsessive observation about rosewater.
Jane: Glad you enjoyed.
[...] Missing the beauties of Paris, I visited Le Cassoulet in Croydon and met a ton of food bloggers baking macarons at L’Atelier des Chefs. Then, feeling homesick and a little masochistic, I froze my ass off to get some pizza at Franco [...]
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