A sweet date with petit fours & macarons in Paris @Bellouet Conseil

I have been making various kinds of baked goodies at home for quite a few years now. Starting with simplest cookies and indulgent chocolate brownies, then slowly stepping into the more elaborate art forms of baking cupcakes and chiffon cakes (recipes to follow in future posts), and finally conquering the ultimate challenge in home-baking - MACARONS. Those who have successfully (or unsuccessfully) baked macarons at home before would understand what I mean by "all the sweat and tears that went behind the scenes"... (yes, it was not until the 15th time until I finally saw those little feet rising in my macarons, and those tears were tears of happiness)

Bridging the gap between the "home-baker" and the "professional"
In search of perfection, it's about time to learn from the proper professionals, in Paris, the foodie heaven that is well known for its sweet delicacies. While most people would choose to go to Le Cordon Bleu for professional cooking classes, it unfortunately didn't offer short courses that would suit my interest nor timeframe. Having done a few searches online, I finally booked into a class in Bellouet Conseil - a three day course to learn to make Petit Fours and Macarons.

Course content

The three day course covers over 20 different types of dry cakes (sables, tuiles), soft cakes (madeleine, amaretti), fresh petit fours, tartlets, savarin etc., and 9 different flavours of macarons (ranging from the traditional ones like caramel, raspberry chocolate, to the slightly more adventurous ones like lime ganache, cherry ganache). The course covered a lot more recipes than I initially expected, which came as a pleasant surprise and made it worth every single penny!  

How was the course?

The course was taught by a professional pastry chef and the class was delivered in French. Equipped with less than ten words in my entire French dictionary, I was soon relieved to find out that... 

1) There were only four people in my class - not a surprise as most professional pastry chefs who usually go on these courses were busy preparing for Easter! With less people enrolled to the class meant I would get more hands-on time to learn

2) The recipes were all nicely printed in English

3) The instructors and the rest of the class were so helpful, so language wasn't really a big issue after all

As the course was designed for real professional chefs, the pace of the course was quite quick and you would be expected to understand the basics in baking. As a sound home-baker, I found it slightly challenging during the initial few hours of the class but soon adapted to working in a real kitchen and it was truly an eye-opening experience!

Day 1 - started with the basics and completed most of the dry cakes. Also prepared a lot of the components required for the soft cakes and petit fours (base for the tartlets, mixture for the fillings)

Day 2 - Completed the soft cakes (chocolate, pistachio, rasins and pineapple), continued with preparing more components for petit fours (mousse and cream filling, glazing, chocolate ganache).

Learned about the mastery of making macaron shells (with Italian Meringue base) and the secrets behind those bright eye-piercing colours (basically food colouring used in "moderation"). Prepared the different ganache fillings for the macarons.

Day 3 - Assembly and decoration - the most exciting part of the course. Staring at trays after trays of little cakes, tartlets and macarons, the final task was to give them last magical touch - dress them up with more chocolate, fruits and cream and then to the presentation plates.

And after days of hard work.... Voilà! The Petit Four and Macaron feast.

And of course, all of us were able to take a sample of these tasty little treats home. Freshly made petit fours tasted much better than the ones that you would normally get from the shop. The macarons needed a day or so to mature in the fridge - and I could probably get away with telling people that they are from Pierre Herme.

Verdict

Value for money? 9 out of 10. If you are a pastry/ dessert fanatic like I am, it's definitely worth the investment (although still quite a hefty amount to pay for a 3-day course)

Will I be going back for another course? Hell yeah (though need to first recover from the sugar overdose and need to save up for my next gourmet venture)


Information


Bellouet Conseil, Paris
http://www.ecolebellouetconseil.com/