"S'more" Macaron Fail? - A French Pastry Challenge | Byron Talbott

Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back. I'm at Tastemade Studios today to help celebrate the upcoming premiere of Top Chef Duels. A new show on Bravo where top chef alumni battle head-to-head. So in the spirit of competition, I'm gonna be dueling with one of my favorite fellow YouTube chefs, Guy Turland from Bondi Harvest. This guy means business. He's just an absolute awesome chef, but I wanna tip the scales in my favor just a little bit today by using some French techniques. So I'm excited to see what he comes up with. So let's get started. Hands up. Oh, hey buddy. All good? Well, as you can see, we're not cooking on the beach today. I know you'd enjoy that. So today's challenge is French pastries. So as you can see, there's some beautiful California produce over here and there are some pastry essentials under here. So we have an hour on the clock. Let's reveal this and see what we have. I need every minute. Oh boy. All right, let's go. French pastries take time. The one that I chose, macarons, is a little worrisome. Alrighty, what do we got here? I very quickly put together that I wanted to use puff pastry and I wanted to do a mille-feuille. You don't need any graham cracker crust, do you? No, mate, all yours. All right, it's all yours. Good luck, by the way. I'll need all of it, right? I don't think Byron knows that I've actually been taught some French cookery before. Really the thing with macarons is making sure that everything is properly weighed out. So I've got chocolate, a bit of butter. We'll melt that down. So I'm gonna use a little bit of graham crackers to go towards like that s'more route. All right, next step is we're gonna make our pastry cream. We're gonna get one vanilla bean. Sometimes you don't have the luxury of time in the kitchen. You have to have everything ready to go. Screams I'm a French man and I should have a baguette and a beret on at the same time. That looks pretty close to where I want it. Gotta get all the good stuff. What I'm gonna do here is cut out some discs, these little puff discs or stars, whatever you wanna call them. I'm gonna get a lid straight on top. That's gonna go straight in the oven. Don't have my cream. I think I've used all my cream. Hey, Byron. Yeah. Are you using your cream over there? You can have half of it. Oh, you're a legend. You want half of it? I can be a generous guy. What are you making? A little bit of macaroons. Yeah. I decided to go with a nice little whimsical approach and do s'mores. You've had a s'more, right? Oh, s'mores are the best. Yeah? I gotta keep it American, right? Oh, completely. All right, I'll bring this back in a sec. All right, you better. Thanks, mate. The idea of tying in American s'mores into macaroons is genius. You know, my formal training experience kind of helped me with that on the fly, what I would do in the kitchen. You got 20 minutes on the clock, guy. How long? 20 minutes, buddy. I really hope that puff pastry happens. I really do. So this is the fun part. You have to get it right. You have to get it perfect every time. No pressure. Just straighten the pan. I'm gonna grab a cinnamon clove. What are you grabbing, guy? Some cinnamon and some cardamom. Some more good stuff. You're stealing all the good stuff again. You want a drink? Right, of course. Ooh, nice. You're gonna get drunk over there, huh? I see your secret. And as usual, I made a complete mess. What's going on there, mate? You look very calm and collected. I don't know, I see what's going on over here. Got some chocolate, getting drunk, having fun. Nice. And I'm gonna do like a meal for you. So I'm gonna layer it. Puff pastry, chocolate. Maybe I shouldn't have chose a French challenge. I'm interested to see how they turn out. Yeah. That's a very bold move. They should be incredible. I'll be back. No, no, no, I'll see it. Guy's dish, pretty insane. He utilized the California produce, had a nice little tart vibe going on. I gotta start on my ganache. This is going to be the filling for this dessert. Heat up a little bit of cream. That should be about right. Nice and bitter chocolate. These are looking good. Beautiful. Now I'm just gonna pop these in. You can't be that chilled out when making macaroons. Not with a timeline, let's be honest. Beautiful. So everything else is ready. It's just waiting on the puff pastry to cook. It should be close. All right, I got this looking good. I guess these should be ready. The macaroons sort of flopped. Sometimes the humidity or something in the air just doesn't work out. All right, so I gotta figure out what I'm gonna do with this. What's happening? It didn't come out exactly how I wanted. Oh no. They're a little wrinkly. Matt, you're a braver man than I am. Here I go spouting off about how awesome I am as a French pastry chef. Mate, this competition's on. It is, it is, it is. Just hit five minutes, guys. All right, Matt, let's get this done. It's a real situation. You just have to keep moving forward, figure out what you wanna do. I probably could make some sort of layered dessert. I gotta put this together. When that one thing goes wrong, you don't have much time to think about creating something else. Do a simple, almost like a s'more trifle. So this is gonna be used as a base. I'm just gonna layer a little bit of the warm ganache. Please stop being such a perfectionist. And this is gonna go straight on top. This is exactly what you'd be doing if you made the macaroon correctly to begin with. 30 seconds, guy. 30 seconds. Aw, man. I'm seriously running out of time. Sweet. That's a good thing for me. It's exactly what I wanted. You know, this was my plan all along, really. I can hear blowtorching going. Just bubbles up exactly like marshmallows. I love it. This is a proper s'more. Cherry on top. Give it a little finishing touches. Ready? Five, four, three, two, one. Yee-hoo-hoo. Time's up, guy. Yeah, boy. Oh my goodness. Good hustle. Yeah, likewise, guys. You did well, man. This is amazing. That's awesome. Nice little s'more touch. Guy's dish was pretty insane. So we've got some puff pastry baked between trays, raspberry coulis on the bottom, fresh strawberries, chocolate, vanilla creme patissiere, and then cherry to finish it off. Let's dig into the s'mores, yeah. That's how I did. I think he did an amazing job in turning something that didn't turn out into an awesome dessert. Has macaroons on the bottom, little chocolate ganache, meringue on top, a little bit more chocolate, graham cracker crust on top. That cherry macaroon really makes it. I think it turned out pretty well. I'm happy with it. All right, mate, I honestly think we both won this one. I have to agree, but we can't leave it like that. You're right. So we're gonna let you guys decide. So make sure you comment below to see who you guys think won. Make sure you check out Bondi Harvest. We'll get our second challenge there that we did recently. Just click the link below. And make sure you guys check out Bravo's new show, Top Chef Duels, premiering on August 6th. I don't wanna let this go to waste, so let's dig in. Let's get into it.