Ahh, the Delicate and Fussy Macaron

I'd never given much thought to how one of France's most famous cookies was made. Macarons, they're called. Today I got an up-close look at how these delicious little sandwich cookies are made, when I joined ten French women for a baking class at tours a Table, owned by a tall bespectacled woman named Frederique Dupuis.

It's a busy place, this cooking school, located on a main street in Tours. Passersby constantly gawk into the windows, interested in what all of those people in aprons are doing in there. Some ask for business cards, others phone Madame Dupuis incessantly, the place was hopping as I joined the group who spoke exclusively in French.

To make macarons, one needs to take almond flour and confectioner's sugar and force it into a seive, so that only a powdery consistency is present. This sounds easy, but it takes about 15 minutes of constant stirring, and grinding the two ingredients into the sieve. I took turns with two women named Caroline, passing the bowl back and forth as we all nearly faded. But that was merely, oh yeah, merely the first of many steps.

You must whip up egg whites, and then blend them gently with a variety of colors. The video above shows the magic that happens when you put in violet coloring and continue to mix. Then you must fold the almond flour/sugar into the whipped whites, slowly, folding...folding...folding, if you rush, you get it wrong.

Then you must let this mixture sit. Sit because if you try to do it too soon, before a little clump of this dough doesn't fade after ten minutes, you have to wait. So after a while you jam the dough into a plastic wrap funnel and begin making oh so tiny little cookies on the baking sheet. "closer, closer to the papier," said Madame Dupuis. "Then leeft it up, just make them leetle."

The one-inch or so rounds are put into the oven for nine minutes. Exactly nine. Then after a long period of cooling, some of them stubbornly sticking to the pan, they are cooled and then made into delicate precious little sandwiches, filled with chestnut essence, jam or chocolate. Phew! That was a lot of work for such tiny little cookies. But one bite convinces it was all worth it.