When I was invited to Chantal Guillon's Macaron Decorating Workshop, I was trying to imagine the behind-the-scenes of how macarons were made from start to finish. Honestly, I don't know the first thing about baking macarons, but I have definitely heard that they are one of the hardest desserts to make from scratch because you have to get the size and texture of the macaron shells just right. But once perfected, you are left with one of the most beautifully decorated and fluffiest tasting desserts that everybody is raving about these days.

The Chantal Guillon Macaron Decorating Workshop hosted approximately 20-30 people who were happily mingling over glasses of champagne and colorful macarons. I met up with a Bay Area photographer, Lisha, at Chantal Guillon for the very first time and we hit it off right away. Also, another photographer and friend that I met at the event, William, kindly introduced himself and led us into the kitchen where all of the magic happens.

William surprised Lisha and I with intriguing facts about the background story of baking macarons - how it's difficult to bake macarons on rainy days because temperature affects the rising of macaron shells, how a majority of macarons are tossed away due to inconsistent macaron shell sizes, how macaron prices are marked higher because of baking setbacks, etc. From a customer's viewpoint, I never really considered the obstacles that bakers had to encounter when preparing macarons and I found myself learning more about macarons within the first five minutes of stepping into the kitchen.

After our little history lesson on macarons, we put on our chef hats and got to work! The flavors they allowed us to work with included Pistachio, Vanilla, and Matcha. A tall gentleman in a chef hat showed us the proper technique of how to grip the pastry bag so that we could effortlessly squeeze a bit of filling on to our respective macaron shells. On my first try, I squeezed wayyy too much filling that it oozed out of my macaron shells like a melted smores sandwich, hah. However, on my second try, I got it just right!

Walking over to an adjacent table, here is where your arts n' crafts skills came in handy! They had stencils where you could "spray paint" your macaron - lo' and behold, my pistachio macaron had a cute, black tuxedo imprinted on it! Or, you could take their red or metallic gold mixture and drizzle that on to your macaron. After the decorating process was over, Lisha and I packed our decorated macarons to-go in adorable Chantal Guillon boxes and went off to shoot some fun pictures for the Instagram!

Lastly, I wanted to thank Lisha for snapping some awesome photos from the workshop! Be sure to book her if you're looking for portrait, engagement, or wedding photography because she's seriously one of the best photographers I've ever met! :)

Necklace: Thought Blossoms | Top: Charlotte Russe | Jacket: Bernardo Fashions | Jeans: Wild Blue Denim | Shoes: Steve Madden

Photography: Lisha Wang Photography