Have you ever tasted a macaron? These cute, colorful, double-decker meringue cookies come in an amazing range of flavors, anything from strawberry and vanilla to pistachio, salted caramel, mocha, and rose petal. They are the perfect combination of crunchy, crusty outer shell and soft, chewy inner tastiness. And the fillings are nothing short of swoonworthy. Fruity jam, rich buttercream, chocolate ganache…mmmmm! Are you starting to see why I’m hooked?
My love of macarons started when I went gluten-free almost ten years ago. Macarons were a treat I could enjoy that were naturally gluten-free. And I’ve always been a sucker for any cookie that’s a two-for-one: a layer of sweet, creamy filling sandwiched between two cookies.
Then, on a teaching trip to Paris, I happened upon Ladurée, a macaron shop known the world over for their delicious little bundles of gastronomic joy.
I couldn’t believe how beautiful their displays were and how many varieties of macarons there were to tempt me, but at $4.00 per cookie, I couldn’t justify buying more than a couple of them.
They were so-o-o-o good! I decided right then and there that I would learn how to make macarons for myself.
And I did! It took some practice and a few dozen less-than-perfect macarons, but I’m getting the hang of it, and those lopsided early attempts tasted just fine. (I thought it was a good idea to hide my failures by eating the mistakes!)
In case you’re interested, this is the recipe that I’ve had the most success with. And this video was very helpful.
So, my love of macarons is what prompted me to create this painting lesson. And, when I first taught it at one of my monthly Sketching at Summerhill workshops, I served my very own homemade macarons for dessert. I had six different varieties, and it was fun having everyone try them all and pick their favorite.
My “How to Paint French Macarons” lesson teaches you everything you need to know to draw and paint macarons. The information is presented in clear steps, so it’s easy to understand exactly how to choose your colors, draw the cookies, paint your base washes, add midtones, then finish up with darks and details. And, as with all of my tutorials, the techniques used in this project are applicable to anything else you’d like to paint. Why not have fun building your skills while painting something fun, pretty, and colorful?
Bonus!
I’ve included plenty of bonus material in this lesson, too. There are pages filled with ideas for additional macaron sketches with different arrangements, settings, accessories, and themes. How about macarons in a tea cup or tied with a bow? Or a poster-style sketch showing twenty different macaron flavors? Or a cute illustrated recipe?
Having these extra ideas for sketchbook journaling adds so much value to this lesson. You’ll learn the basic techniques using the step-by-step instructions then go on to create more artwork inspired by the thirty extra inspiration sketches that I’ve included.
I’ve also put together some suggestions for lettering styles that will complement and enhance your macaron sketches, whether you want a look that’s elegant and classy or cute and whimsical.
This lesson is pure fun! And don’t we all need a little bit more fun in our lives these days? 🙂
I hope you’ll give this lesson a try – make a macaron card for a friend, or create an illustrated recipe to share with someone. While you’re practicing, you’ll be spreading some sunshine and making the world a happier, more colorful place.
I really enjoyed all of your garden stories last week in the comments. It’s interesting to see how many childhood memories are connected to flowers and gardens. Thanks for taking the time to participate. And now…..
The winner of the drawing for Week 2 is
Jeanne Wilson
Congratulations, Jeanne ! You’ve won the Kilimanjaro 12″ x 9″ Bright White Paintbook.
For this week’s prize drawing, I was planning to give away a Princeton Aqua Elite Series 4850 Synthetic Kolinsky Brush, size 8 round. It’s one of my favorite brushes, and I recommend it in all my tutorials. But it looked so lonely in the photo all by itself that I decided to throw in a Stillman and Birn 7 x 7 Beta Series Sketchbook, too! (Thanks go out to Stillman and Birn and Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff for their generous donations.)
I have almost the entire series of Princeton Aqua Elite Brushes because I like them so much. The #8 round is the one I reach for most often when I’m working in my journals, and it would be perfect for the “How to Paint French Macarons” lesson. It holds plenty of paint and has just enough flex to keep me happy. It comes to a fine point, so I can use it for details as well as washes. It’s also available as a travel brush.
The Stillman and Birn spiral-bound sketchbook is a favorite among sketchers. The paper has a slight tooth but is less textured than cold-press watercolor paper, making it a good fit for sketches that includes text and titles. It’s easy on my pens, and the paper doesn’t wrinkle, even when using juicy washes. It’s a great all-around sketchbook that can handle anything you throw at it.
Be sure to leave a comment below to enter this week’s giveaway. (US addresses only, please.) The winner of the drawing will be announced in next week’s “Lesson of the Week” post on August 24, 2021.
The prompt for your comments this week is…
What is your favorite dessert to make or eat?
All this talk of macarons has me craving one. I’m off to bake a batch right now!
Good luck with the giveaway, and happy sketching!
100 Comments
Such a fun lesson Leslie! ❤️
Desserts, love them all, cheesecake, ice cream, and anything with caramel.
At this time if year…Peach Pie! Thanks Leslie… you have created another fantastic lesson 😉
I’m feeling like a macaron now!
What a fun idea. Macarons are so beautiful. My favorite dessert is peach cobbler.
Favorite dessert, nothing beats a classic chocolate chip cookie. From eating the cookie dough (a treat in itself), to a warm cookie right out of the oven, or frozen, right out of the freezer where you had to hide them!
You sound like a girl after my own heart. I think I like the dough better before it’s baked. And I eat cookies from the freezer more often than I do fresh ones, so I’ve come to prefer them. The hiding thing doesn’t work at all, does it? 🙂
My favorite dessert would have to be Lemon Meringue pie. I love seeing how high I can get the meringue, and when I have the time to make one it don’t hang around very long.
Blueberry crisp! With vanilla ice cream.
Love New York Style Cheesecake
New York Style Cheesecake
Love your macaron photos! My favorite dessert is creme brulee.
My favorite dessert to make is pie. Any pie, but rhubarb is the best!
I’m with Rebecca; pie it is! Husband and I speak fluent pie! Banana cream is especially a favorite.
I love to make cupcakes with my granddaughter. We have so much fun decorating them!
your pastry art is charming and lovely.
thanks for a chance to win your generous give away.
I have to say apple pie is my favorite dessert to bake partly because my mother made it often. Sometimes we were even allowed a small slice for breakfast!
I was not inspired to run off and make any cookies, however, I was inspired enough to buy the course and make the cookies on watercolor paper. :-). (Shocked at the price of a box of macrons!)
Love your lessons!
Choosing a favorite dessert is like choosing a favorite child. It’s impossible! I love making and eating chocolate cheesecake. With strawberries added to it it’s a piece of heaven. So is cinnamon rolls, cake of any flavor and pies, glorious pies. If it has sugar in it I’ll eat it and love it.
So true! There’s no way I could ever pick a favorite, but I have to say that tiramisu is right up there for me.
My all time favorite has to be Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Give me a cookie anytime anywhere and I’m a happy camper! Loved this lesson (so what else it new)!
I have to have angel food cake with boiled frosting for my birthday!
Hi Leslie! My daughter is the dessert maker in the family. She makes a chocolate cinnamon cookie that I adore! I purchased your Watercolor Essentials lesson. I am now back from a wonderful week at the Jersey Shore with lots of family and am now collecting the materials I need to get started.
Have a great week!
Terry
I hope you have fun trying out the techniques. Then be sure to do some sketches right away to put what you’ve learned into practice.
Oooh la la… I would love to try that travel brush version for sure!!! 😃
My favorite dessert is ice cream! …and I wouldn’t turn my noise at a little macaroon to go with it! 😉😋
When I use a #8 or #10 Aqua Elite travel brush when I’m sketching onsite during a trip, I can usually do the entire sketch with just the one brush except for any lettering, where I might need a finer point. It makes painting outdoors so much simpler when I don’t have to fiddle with a handful of brushes. I can just get in the zone and paint!
I love desserts that have rhubarb in them like crisp or pie. Yum!!! I prefer it not to be mixed with anything else.
I like rhubarb, too, Bonnie. I have a big rhubarb patch here at our house, and I’m going to transplant some of it to our new place. I have a recipe for Rhubarb Crumble Muffins that I make all summer long. If you’d like it, just email me.
Love the macaron lesson we did at your house and especially eating them.! They are good.!
My favorite dessert would be tiramisu, cheesecake or Herseys chocolate caramel river ice cream. Those are such treats.
Would love to win the brush and sketchbook. This is fun.
My favorite all time dessert is not French inspired, I’m sad to say. It is instead a dessert from my favorite Thai restaurant. Sweet sticky rice with mango. Alas, it is certainly not as photogenic or as colorful as the luscious Macarons. But it is YUMMY!
I love all kinds of desserts but my favorite two are Cherry Pie and Bread Pudding.
Cherry pie is one of my favorites too. I like it with a crumb topping. I have trouble finding sour cherries around here, so I don’t get to make it very often anymore. 🙁
I love anything with pistachios ……had wonderful pistachio gelato in Venice that I can still taste! I can’t wait to try painting your macarons —-so colorful and good enough to eat. Thanks for doing these giveaways—-a good summer pick-me-up.
German Chocolate Cake. My husband of 41 years knows that and has a local bakery (not any of those “grocery store” places for me!) bake one every year from my September birthday.
Happy Early Birthday! What a sweet husband you have!
As a southerner all of my life, there is nothing better to me that a strawberry shortcake with fresh strawberries from the local market. Of course I also love watermelon and blueberries and all that can be done with them!
Thank you for sharing your wonderful lessons with us. They are truly “gifts” to me!
Happy last days of Summer!
Have you tried Mojito Watermelon? Here’s a link to the recipe: https://www.lesliefehling.com/ilustrated-recipe-mojito-watermelon/ It’s a favorite around here.
Favorite dessert??? Oh how to pick just one … anything chocolate for sure, gelato, fruit crisps … would love to have one of your macaroons though!
Come and get it, Marlene! I just made a batch of amazing strawberry macarons yesterday. They’re waiting for you….
Chocolate ganache cake … but macarons would be nice too!
Warm apple crisp with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!
That sounds like fall – can’t wait for apple season!
Now I’m hungry! These look (almost!) too beautiful to eat and I’ve never tasted one before, but now you have me curious. I’m just like you though – at $4 a cookie, I would definitely try making them myself first.
My favorite dessert is ice cream! Right now my hubby and I are on a kick: one scoop butter pecan and one scoop chocolate moose tracks. Eaten together, they’re each other’s perfect compliment and seem to bring out the best in each flavor.
Loved today’s post – thanks!
I love chocolate for dessert. Not to picky as to how it is prepared. 😍
I love this photos of macarons.. so amazing as is your paintings of them.
A Charlotte Russe, a simple yellow cake with whipped cream affair, sold in a push up cylinder in candy stores and luncheonettes and sometimes street carts, in NYC in the 1950’s. I know this dates me, but I have to say that the memory of eating this on-the-go dessert outside in warm weather speaks to me of great pleasure moments, and what is a dessert, if not an ultimate food pleasure?
I love your macaroon inspirations. And I do love macaroons, but also, for me $4. per is a bit high. I will now try making them. Btw, I also love S&B sketchbooks!
Charlotte Russe sounds familiar, but I’ve never had the pleasure of tasting it. Doesn’t sound like it would be hard to make. I might have to try that sometime.
Such lovely painting tips!
I have yet to meet a dessert I didn’t like!! My favorite right now is banana pudding. Your macaroons are very tempting.
Banana pudding is my husband’s favorite. I really should make it for him more often. Thanks for reminding me of it. They even have gluten free vanilla wafers now that are a pretty good substitute for the real thing.
I’ve tried making macaroons and it is very difficult! Hence, the high price!
Yours look great and makes me want to go
back to Paris!
Aaaah, Paris! How I miss traveling….
Leslie, only you would go to all that trouble for your group! Spellcheck changed macarons to macaroni and then to macaroons, so I’ll just say my favorite cookies are Mexican wedding cakes, made with pecans.😍
My favorite dessert to make and eat is a raspberry almond torte. Macarons are so beautiful and tasty too but I do not think I have the courage to try to make them! I had them at a shop we visited on a tour of Paris and it may have well have been the same shop you spoke of so longingly.
Mmm, raspberry almond torte sounds heavenly. I’d love to have the recipe.
So many choices….hmmm …my favorite is warm triple berry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. At least right now that’s what I think ..but ask me tomorrow and who knows what I might say.
my mom made me a 4 layer b’day cake, a buttermilk cake with a pound of butter in the frosting! in between layers and on top were walnuts, coconut, maraschino cherries and I think currants, and it was so good. I make a half version, one layer and cut the frosting way down, and it is still wonderful. the frosting is made by cooking a small amount of milk and a lot of flour to a thick paste, then creaming butter and sugar, adding the flour mix, and vanilla. it is really good. now I am going to have to make one! thanks again for your give-aways! xox
I guess a favorite dessert I like to make and eat would be a huckleberry cheesecake. Thank you for a chance at your wonderful giveaway!
My favorite dessert is blueberry crumb pie, but a plateful of colorful macarons next to a cup of tea is a most beautiful sight!
My Dessert this time of year is a peach blueberry cobbler:)
Nothing beats chocolate chip cookies still a little warm from the oven, but brown sugar brownies come close!
Thanks so much for the information about the Princeton elite sable brushes. Always looking for a good all around brush. I am enjoying these lessons!
Make? Hands down, ice cream. Well, I guess that’s not so much making as scooping, but regardless, it’s quick, easy, and oh so delicious. Now eating–that’s a different story. There are a ton of decadent desserts out there, but nothing is more satisfying to me than a beautiful slice of blackberry pie. The sweet/tart taste of the berries coupled with a flaky crust is divine!
I love to bake and I would have a hard time picking my one favorite but maybe my Peanut Butter Meltaway Cake …… over-the-top delicious!
Several years ago I finally was able to prepare a delicious pie crust (my earlier failures seemed to be directly related to not owning a dough blender!). My all-time (but seasonal!) favorite filling is strawberry rhubarb. Yum!
I’ve never had a macaron or seen them (my goodness you say). Your lesson looks delightful though because they are so colorful and yummy looking so I’ll be purchasing the lesson for sure. My favorite dessert is the home made old fashioned apple pie that grandma made for us when we visited her on the farm, juicy and sweet!
My favorite dessert to make and eat is my Triple Lemon Cheesecake! There are a lot of steps involved in making it, but it is so worth the effort! YUM!!
Anything chocolate is heaven. (Though I have just gone on a diabetic diet so now I can only dream)
PS. although I live in Canada, my daughter has a US address and that is where I send things from the US.
Give me apple pie with ice cream!
My favorite dessert was a chocolate coffee cheesecakebthat I made last year. So decadent. 3 layers of yummy goodness. Not sure I can duplicate it.
I think I put on a few pounds just reading about it! 🙂
Apple pie has always been my favorite! I found a great recipe for a blueberry almond crisp this summer that I’ve made a couple of times and it’s been a hit! Loved the suggestion for macarons with tea! Sounds just perfect! Thank you for all the wonderful sketching info that you share, love to keep learning! Happy sketching!
You’re welcome, Elizabeth. It’s my pleasure to share. I want more people to know the joy that comes from keeping a visual journal of your life.
Your macarons are beautiful Leslie. I just tried some for the first time and loved them. I always thought they might be too sweet. Not so.
Paris,oh Paris. What a beautiful reminder. Thank you
That was one of my favorite trips. Paris was wonderful and Provence was a dream!
German chocolate cake at Christmas!
I love thse maccaroons! But my al time favorite dessert is cannoli!!
What fun to paint a desert! I would have to hurry before I ate it!!
My family loves my Creamy Strawberry Cheesecake. They ask for it often. I also make an amazing Strawberry Pie. My husband says it’s better than ones we’ve bought at a bakery.
For summer, it’s got to be key lime pie!
For winter, it’s apple crisp with bourbon poured over the top!!🤪
Who doesn’t adore macarons, on the page or in the mouth?! These are beautiful and it looks like a fun lesson. (I was trying to channel my inner Leslie Fehling yesterday when painting a grid piece. It’s rather like watching TV with rabbit ears — when the picture is good, it is fabulous, but when “interference” comes along, things get a little wobbly! This is how we learn!
Favorite dessert to make — there are so many of them! But cookies (any kind!) and lemon icebox pie (three ingredients, plus the crust, no baking!) come top of mind. I’ve made macarons at home and found that same video you shared the perfect guide. Happy week!
What a fantastic lesson you have on macaroons! I have to say my favorite cookie to make would be oatmeal cookies with dark chocolate chips…warm from the oven, when the chocolate is soft and gooey and the oatmeal…oh so delicious!!❤️
What lovely painted macaroons! My favorite dessert is anything with peaches in it!!!!
I love creamy desserts- creme brulee, flan, chocolate mousse
So beautiful! My favorite dessert is black forest cake. Funnily, I don’t like coconut and every year growing up my mother would buy me a German Chocolate cake. I think that was her favorite!
How beautiful your macaroon watercolors are! It’s nearing that time of year… Getting ready to make the Bourbon Pumpkin Cheesecake my family (and myself!) loves so much and looks forward to.
I love many deserts, but pie is one of my favorites, any kind. My husband’s favorite is a dairy-free coconut caramelized banana cream pie that I make from scratch. Oh, my my my my… My tastebuds swoon in memory…
So many choices — brownies and vanilla ice cream, fresh fruit and whipped cream and peach & blueberry pie rank at the top for me!
I can’t stop drooling over those macaroons. As soon as I finish up with the cheeseburger tutorial I will head over to macaroons. I was going to start my diet today to shed the COVID pounds. I will start in September.
My favorite dessert is Mochi. I like the one with the fresh strawberry inside but also enjoy pineapple and guava filled ones too.
It’s so hard to choose just one dessert! Creme Brûlée would be it though if I had to pick. There’s just something about the custardy filling topped with crispy sugary goodness. Mmmm.
OK, I must admit that I have never ever eaten a macaroon!! However, your description and your artwork make me think that I have missed something essential to life!! Since I do love chocolate, that’s the flavor I will seek. Thanks for adding another thing to my list of “MUST Haves”!!!
Your life won’t be complete without trying macarons (preferably in Paris!) 🙂
Thanks for all the watercolor painting tips. I’ve always wanted to master this media and with you help I’m improving. It’s true “practice makes progress”. I have learned so much from the three classes of yours I’ve enrolled in.
I’d have to say my favorite dessert depends on the season. I recently made a blueberry buckle that was very tasty. Then there is the lemon cheese cake gooy bar that was a big hit and was even good frozen.
Thanks again for the fun lesson!
I’m so glad to hear that you’ve found the lessons helpful! That makes all the work worthwhile.
I love a macaron! One of my favorite desserts are chocolate chip brookies (1/2 cc cookie. & 1/2 brownie)…but I just love all desserts!
One of my favorite desserts to make is cheesecake with fresh strawberries. Your macarons look yummy and beautiful, too. My first taste of a macaron was in our Paris hotel; they had placed a box in our room as a gift. Delightful! We went on to try a few more from bakeries in Paris. I love all the pastel colors of the macaron; they would be fun to paint!
The Scandinavian Almond Cake. It’s the easiest cake to make. It can be served plain, sprinkled with confectioners sugar, served with berries and whipped cream on the side. Unique presentation when made in a Scandinavian Almond Cake pan. (Recipe and inexpensive pan can be found on the internet.)
A good, moist chocolate cake– oh wait- apple crisp with vanilla ice cream– or maybe butterscotch oatmeal cookies. Too many choices!
Sfogliatelle……it’s an Italian pastry that is heavenly. I grew up in a Sicilian family and we always enjoyed these on special occasions. This year, during covid, I attempted making them myself, and they came out great!