I’m a cookie snob. This snobbery started when I was 15 and went to Paris. Ahhh, Paree… she taught me many things. How to order my coffee “un café crème, s’il vous plait,”, among other things, and introduced me to the delightful macaron. This sweet, airy, meringue-based confection is always beautifully colored and filled with either ganache, buttercream or jam filing. The perfect macaron has a slightly shiny thin shell with a slight crunch and melts in the mouth.
A macaron is not a macaroon.
What? You might here them pronounced macaroon, but a macaroon is also a meringue-based, but coconut topped and denser. It’s a tease when I read a sign that says macaron and it’s really a macaroon. While I enjoy a good macaroon on occasion, the macaron has my heart and has for nearly 25 years.
My husband travels to New York City occasionally for work and when he’s there, he brings me back one thing: Macarons. He doesn’t bring back just any macarons. He either goes to Laduree or La Maison du Chocolate and brings home a small box of six macarons. They are baked every day by pastry chefs trained at their ateliers in France.
Every day, for six days, I brew a cup of tea in my favorite cup, sit down at the table and have one macaron. I take time to inhale its delicate aroma, take in the beautiful colors, and then nibble one tiny bite at a time, savoring every single morsel, letting the flavors swirl over my tongue. It’s a sensory experience created with formality and ritual.