Macarons de Paris

I've been obsessed with Parisian macarons for about four years now. I tasted my first about four years ago at a crepe shop downtown in the Financial District. They were simple flavors - almond, chocolate and coffee. I found more at Bay Bread Boulangerie and their flavors expanded to include strawberry, praline, raspberry, hazelnut, lavender, rose, pistachio, pink grapefruit, lemon and most delicious of all, salted caramel. Now, these macarons are not to be confused with coconut macaroons, the dense nuggets of coconut dipped in chocolate that one can find at most bakeries and supermarkets in the States. Parisian macarons are made with finely ground almonds, sugar, egg whites, sometimes flavored, and are now popularly sandwiched together with some kind of filling - be it buttercream, ganache, citrus curd, jam, etc. In Paris, I sampled even more exotic flavors at Laduree, such as violet, mint, chestnut, blackcurrant, licorice and black pepper. And at two of the most avant garde patisseries of the city, Pierre Herme and Sadaharu Aoki, I sampled wild combinations, such as chocolate chestnut, black sesame, red been, rose lychee raspberry, white truffle hazelnut and olive oil matcha green tea.

After too many drinks at the Hotel Murano bar, Justin and I discussed the prospects of opening a macaron shop in the States. Note: Justin is slightly allergic to macarons, and past proposed projects of ours included a "go away baby" noodle shop that also served bacon stuffed pork chops smothered in gravy and salads, which was also adjoined to an optomotrist's shop and a shoe store, of course (don't ask).

When I got home, I managed to procure Pierre Herme's out of print dessert cookbook. Unfortunately, this cookbook was an older edition, from when he worked with Fauchon, and contained no macaron recipes. I found a recipe in my Bouchon cookbook, and cross-referenced it with various recipes I found on the internet, and decided to use Herme's buttercream recipe. I've been making macarons every weekend since. The first week's were a simple almond version, with vanilla buttercream. I'd never made buttercream until now - I always found the whole molten sugar thing to be intimidating, but Pierre Herme's buttercream recipe was pretty reassuring, not to mention delicious. If you've never had homemade buttercream before, oh. my. gawd. But now it kinda frightens me since I know exactly WHAT goes into buttercream... sort of like when I made puff pastry for the first time. Unfortunately, I was overzealous in piping, so they came out HUGE. My coworkers and hubby were pretty happy though. Last week, it was chocolate macarons with a chocolate buttercream filling. This week, it's gonna be chocolate macarons with a salted butter caramel filling... the caramel is cooling as I type. Pictures to be posted later!