Soaper gets sweet! Part 2...

Many years ago on a visit to Paris, I discovered the French macaron cookie made by the Laduree Patisserie in the Printemps department store. Love at first sight and love at first bite.  Every time I go to Paris, I stop in for more and I've always wanted to make them. 

On the road to making them, I met Erin Pikor. Once I found out that she makes macaron soap, I knew we'd be friends!  I have one of her lemon créme soaps.  I can't bring myself to use it.  It smells like a lovely lemon cake. It arrived wrapped in beautiful flocked paper.

Pretty!!

Next, on the road to making them, Trader Joe's started importing frozen macarons from France.  So good, nice price, low effort!  I don't have a picture of those, we ate them all and I've had to ban myself from buying more.

Finally, on the road to macarons, I met Joyce. Joyce studied pastry at the Cordon Bleu.  Joyce said she'd teach me, and she did.  Joyce is awesome!

Sifted ingredients: 

Chocolate ganache: 

Mixing in egg whites for the chocolate hazelnut cookies: 

Piping out the almond cookies:

Purple egg whites: 

Passionfruit buttercream (I brought the canned passionfruit back from Australia): 

The cookies have a perfect foot:

We await our filling:

 Filled:

Pretty macarons:
Almond cookie with orange buttercream filling:

 Purple hazelnut cookie with ganache filling:

We made 3 kinds of cookies: Almond, chocolate hazelnut, hazelnut dyed purple.
We made 4 kinds of fillings: Chocolate ganache, passionfruit buttercream, orange buttercream, Nutella.

All of them were delicious and they didn't last long.  :)  I can't wait to make more!
Thanks for the fun time, Joyce! 

Photos added

I've updated each post from the Handcrafted Soapmaker's Guild conference with photos.
I had a great time, met great people, learned a ton and am now very inspired and overwhelmed!

A few more photos:

Debbie and Erin enjoy their masks:


Bob and Irv enjoy their masks and some laughs care of Wendy Liebman and Jon Reep:


Feathers & fun! :)

HMSG - Day 2

The day started with the Annual Meeting of Members. Elections, votes, etc.

At the HSMG, we vote with our spatulas:


Spatula:

Then, great sessions. I only have time to post a few quotable quotations:

"It's asthma. I do not have that piglet thing." - Linda
Linda is a great lady with a tonne (added the "ne" for extra tonage and metric-ness) of knowledge. Linda makes 900 bar batches. I don't think I've ever had that much soap around at one time, let alone in 1 batch! Also, a "PowerPoint shout out" to Linda. She lost her presentation and redid it overnight. I really liked how she presented only images, not slides and slides of words.

"Don't do it, Sweetie. It's going to go rancid." - Linda (again)
Sage advice to all of us about superfatting given to Jim, the youngest soaper in attendance.

Finished the day with a nice dinner, spa facials courtesy of Dead Sea Bulk Materials (smoooooth!) and drinks with Vanessa and Erin.

Erin and Bob:


Good night!