Sure, you could come to Paris and spend your trip sampling lots of delicious macarons – and you definitely should! However, why not try a macaron making workshop in Paris. What is better than munching through your own hand-crafted macarons and arming yourself with the skills to (try to) recreate them at home….
How to choose a macaron making workshop in Paris
There is a lot of choice for a macaron making workshop in Paris. I would recommend choosing one where you get to make the shells and fillings. Some classes, Galleries Lafayette I am looking at you!, prepare everything before you arrive so you only get to pipe and assemble. I don’t really see the point.
You might also want to read reviews of each class to see what previous participants say about how many they got to make / take away and what and whether there was any choice in flavour. We took away a filled box of 15-20 macarons each from our class, in 2 different flavours
If, like us, you are travelling with kids, you will also need to check age restrictions. I found some classes were only for 16+ or 14+. I wouldn’t really recommend this experience for kids younger than about 8 or 9. However, older kids and younger teens will be able to do everything and will be proud of their creations!
Our workshop – Macaron Making with Noémie
We chose this workshop as it ticked our boxes in terms of age suitability, making everything from scratch and getting plenty of macarons to take away! We liked that it is also a small group experience (max. 8 guests). Our family of 4 were in a group with 2 other guests, a mother and teenage son from Windsor.
The logistics
We booked the Macaron Making with Noémie workshop through Get your Guide, please see the link here. I generally like to book directly rather than going through resellers. I couldn’t however find any specific website or direct contact details for Noémie.
The workshop is held in small studio in the Batignolles area of Paris. The nearest metro station is Pont Cadinet (line 14). The studio is just a 5 minute walk away and easy to find.
What we did
Noémie spoke very good English and took us through the process of making lemon and pistachio macarons from scratch. She was quite an exacting taskmaster (my hubby thought she was bossy!). Measurements had to be spot on and techniques performed accurately… The end results were however amazing.
I had never realised that the only flavour you ever get in the shells is almond. The shells are coloured (with a gel or powder food colouring, never liquid) but the flavour comes from the filling. Our group made a lemon filling (like a lemon curd) and a pistachio cream (made in a similar way to crème pâtissière).
We made all the shells and the 2 fillings as a group, with each of us taking turns on the steps. Then we each filled our own tray of shells and assembled the macarons.
We left with at least 50-60 macarons between the four of us (and we had already sampled a few!) I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that there were not many left by the evening! Noémie also gave us each a recipe card so we could try to replicate our creations at home.
So will it make me a macaron making expert?
I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop but was slightly disappointed by how difficult it was to try to recreate the macarons at home. I had added some notes to the recipe card during the course of the workshop. However, when we came to work through it ourselves, there were quite a few points where we weren’t sure when the mix was ready, how long to cool it before piping etc…
We tried making the lemon macarons and the lemon filling did come out really well. We even enjoyed the leftovers on toast for breakfast the next day. The actual shells were (far) less successful though. The taste was nice and almondy. However, the good news stops there. Our shells had spread into one another on the tray and came out mainly as a large chewy blob! Those shells which hadn’t morphed with the rest were quite flat and not shiny and smooth. We battled on and assembled them with the lemon cream anyway.
Leaving to take my younger son to football training, I returned to find my teen and his band mates had demolished most of the assembled shells and even peeled off sections from the chewy blob. No-one had much space for dinner!
I asked my hubby, a former chef, what he thought we had done wrong. The list was dispiritingly long: over-mixed, not rested or cooled enough, piped too large, needed more time in the oven, flour and ground almonds could have been sifted better etc…. I think I might ask him to have a go next time!
To sum up our macaron making workshop in Paris…
Overall, this was a really fun workshop and a good interactive experience to break up the museums and galleries for the boys. What we made was amazing and maybes one day, with more practice, I will be able to recreate something vaguely similar…
Once you are all sugared up from your macaron making workshop in Paris, you can enjoy the afternoon seeing the other sights of Paris. Why not check out some of my other reviews, such as our visit to Notre Dame.