If you want to learn how to bake like a top French pastry chef, there's no better school than Le Cordon Bleu Malaysia.
The revered culinary and hospitality school recently offered us a sweet peek into its kitchen, where its two pastry chef instructors showed us their favourite recipes. Get your mixers and ovens ready!
From Chef Thierry Lerallu: Macaron Au Fruit de la Passion et Framboise (Passionfruit and Raspberry Macarons)
Normandy-born Chef Thierry Lerallu's passion for patisserie has endured for decades - he has delighted so many with his skilled work for more than 30 years, not only in France and Malaysia, but South Korea and Mauritius.
Here, Chef Thierry shares how to make Macaron Au Fruit de la Passion et Framboise (Passionfruit and Raspberry Macarons), a traditional French preparation with a modern twist. Classic macarons were plain, but macarons today have playful flavours and colours, popularised by Chef Pierre Hermé in the 1980s.
Chef Thierry enjoys how the tangy macaron shell pairs nicely with sweet cream. His recipe comprises three categories: the passionfruit macaron shell, with the raspberry ganache and the passion fruit compote. The macarons need to stay chilled overnight, so plan in advance.
Passionfruit macaron shells recipe
Ingredients
250g icing sugar
250g almond powder
80g egg white
250g sugar
60g water
80g egg white›
1g yellow powder colouring
Process
Mix sugar and water together to let the sugar dissolve a little. Let the water out, and brush off the sugar grains on the side. Cook the sugar at 118 ºC.
Then mix equal amounts of icing sugar and almond powder through the sieve, adding them in slowly and steadily. Mix the concoction.
Add the raw egg white little by little into the Tant Pour Tant (Tant Pour Tant refers to ingredients prepared in equal amounts; here, it refers to your icing sugar and almond powder mix).
Put the Tant Pour Tant in the stand mixer and mix. While mixing, add in the sugar from earlier and the yellow powder colouring. Keep mixing until stiff peaks form on your meringue.
Now, you can start macaron-ing. Take a wooden spoon or a scraper, scoop up the dough from the bottom and press it to the sides, and let it roll back into the middle. Repeat until the texture becomes smooth.
Rest for about 30 minutes, until the texture is dry, really dry. If it’s not dry, the macaron shell will crack during baking.
Pipe your meringue onto silicon paper to create the macarons.
Bake at 150 ºC, for 14 to 15 minutes, in a low fan convection oven.
After baking, keep the macaron shells in the chiller, preferably overnight.
Raspberry ganache recipe
Ingredients
50g cream
38g raspberry puree
28g butter
12g inverted sugar or honey
150g zephyr white chocolate
Process
Boil the cream together with puree and inverted sugar. Add over the white chocolate.
Wait few seconds, then stir.
Add a few drops of pink colouring to make the ganache pop a bright raspberry red.
When the mixture cools to around 25ºC , place the mixture into a piping bag and pipe into a doughnut shape onto the macaron shell. You will only need to pipe half the macaron shells.
Ingredients
32g water
62g passionfruit puree
45g sugar
2g pectin NH, a thickening agent
Process
Mix sugar and pectin, then add into the mixture. Cook for a few minutes till set.
Wait for the mixture to cool down, and place mixture into a piping bag. Pipe the passionfruit compote into the middle of the doughnut-shaped raspberry ganache.
Finally, complete your macaron by putting your remainder half un-piped shells on the topped up shells with rasperry ganache and passion fruit compote fillings to complete the macarons.
London-born Chef Sarju Ranavaya is an alumnus of Le Cordon Bleu who has come full circle as a Pastry Chef Instructor in Malaysia. Early in his career, he honed his craft at respected establishments in London; he later represented the United Kingdom as the Chocolate candidate in the Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie 2019 global culinary competition, scoring second-highest on all artistic work and overall buffet.
Chef Sarju presents his childhood favourite of Paris-Brest for this feature. While he was raised in London, he enjoyed visiting pastry shops in France to sample their temptations. He also loves praline and nuts, particularly hazelnuts, which are prominent in this recipe.
Though Chef Sarju confesses to a sweet tooth, he strives to ensure his recipes have a maximum sugar content of only 8 to 12 percent, keeping them a little healthier than any typical pastry or dessert .
This recipe can be completed in one session:
Pâte à Choux
63g Water
63g Milk
50g Butter
2g Salt
3g Sugar
75g Cake flour
100g Eggs
Egg Wash
1 Egg
2 Egg yolks
Pinch of salt and sugar
Crème mousseline praliné
300g Milk
35g Sugar
80g Egg yolk
20g Cake flour
20g Corn starch
¼ Vanilla pod, split
100g Hazelnut paste 100%
150g Butter, soft
Decorations
Icing Sugar for dusting
50g Hazelnut praline 60%
60g Baked almonds
For the choux paste: In a pan, bring to the boil the water, milk, sugar, salt and butter. Then add in the cake flour and continue to cook for one minute.
Once cooked, the dough should be smooth and come away from the sides of the pan.
Place the dough into an electric mixer. Mixer should be on slow speed whilst the eggs are added in gradually. Once all the eggs have been added you should have reached “dropping consistency” - to test it, take a bit of the mixture and see if it slides off the spoon. If it does, your mixture is ready.
Place the mixture into a piping bag with a 10mm plain nozzle and pipe a ring approximately 15cm in diameter onto a buttered baking tray. Pipe a slightly smaller ring as well; this smaller ring will help hold the toppings later on.
DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR DURING BAKING. If you take out the choux before it’s cooked, it will collapse. If the sides look cooked and turn golden brown, this means they are ready to be taken out.
For the crème mousseline, bring the milk and vanilla to a boil in a pan.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolk, cake flour and cornstarch until smooth and it turns lighter in colour.
Pour half of the boiled Milk and Vanilla mixture onto the egg mixture and mix. Place everything back into the pan with the remaining Milk & Vanilla mixture and continue to cook until the mixture becomes thick and glossy.
Once the pastry cream is cooked, pour onto a flat tray, flatten the mixture and cover with cling film touching the surface of the cream.
Once the pastry cream is cooled down to room temperature, place in an electric mixer and mix until it is smooth. You will then proceed to add the hazelnut paste and soft butter.
Keep stirring the mixture until it is smooth and glossy.
For the assembly, cut open the larger ring of choux into two halves. Place the smaller ring of choux on top of what will be the bottom half of the choux. Pipe the crème mousseline using a large star nozzle in a decorative manner on this bottom half.
Place the top half onto the cream. Dust the top with icing sugar for serving.
