Making Macarons at Strangas

I've attempted making macarons at home three times and every time the macaron shells have either been hollow, or they haven't developed feet, or they've just plain stuck to my baking paper and crumbled when I tried to take them off. I love eating macarons but they are definitely not easy to make!


My future mother-in-law remembered that I had mentioned that Strangas offers a macaron course, and so for Christmas my future in-laws gifted me with the opportunity to take one of Nikolaos' macaron classes! Yesterday morning I, along with seven other participants, spent four hours in the dessert boutique learning how to make macarons using Strangas' own recipe.

We started the class off with some of his amazing scones and some coffee. (If you haven't tried his banana seabuckthorn jam, you really need to. It's delicious!) Then we paired off and started making two types of macarons. One with a dark chocolate ganache filling, and the other was filled with a raspberry chocolate ganache. We dived in and made the ganache first before starting the macaron shells. All along the way, Strangas guided us and helped us through the different steps.

I really enjoyed the class and how hands on it was. Rather than just watching Nikolaos make the macarons, we did everything on our own with him stepping in from time to time. He also went over the different types of chocolate you can use in a ganache. He gave us three different Valhrona chocolates to sample and talked to us about the differences in flavor and richness with each one. Making perfect macaron shells takes a lot of precision, and we learnt what to be careful of and how different steps in the process can cause mistakes and potentially ruin our macarons. I'm just hoping that I can replicate the macarons we made today at home!

Have you made macarons before? Do you have any tips to making the perfect macaron shells? And what do you like to fill them with? Strangas almost only uses ganaches, but I've also filled mine with lemon curd and vanilla bean buttercream.

If you would like to learn how to make macarons in Copenhagen, I can definitely recommend taking the class at Strangas. But then again, I always recommend everything I have from there! And now I am off to eat another macaron! Have a great Monday!