The William and French Macarons

In Tuesday's Advanced Bakeshop class on April 12, we finished production of "The William." This is an entrement with four components, a circular almond dacquoise layer on the bottom, topped with crushed hazelnut nougatine, topped with poached bartlett pears, and finished with creme chiboust. "The William" is named for the Bartlett pears because in France they are called Williams pears.





During class, we also had to temper chocolate and make chocolate cigarettes which we'll use next week on our entremet for our final practical exam.

While some class members were tempering chocolate and making their chocolate cigarettes, we had time to experiment with french macarons. Chef allowed us to be creative with size, color, and flavor. My partner for the day, Rebecca, said to me, "Want to use praline buttercream?" Um, hell yes! I love praline buttercream, as I may have mentioned in my post about the Marjolaine. So she and I made chocolate macarons with a praline buttercream filling. We also decided we would make larger macarons instead of smaller ones, and this is what we came up with:



At the end of class, we put together a spread with each of the types. Some had lavender and lemon, some had vanilla but were brightly colored, while others had strawberry. It was really a fun creative day in class and the results were definitely tasty.