Pierre Herme French Macarons

When Mike and I started planning for our trip to London and Paris, Mike was in charge of planning out London and I was in charge of Paris.  On my list of places to visit was "Pierre Herme", which is famous for french macarons.

After succumbing to the fact that the majority of things in Paris were expensive, I didn't even blink an eyelash at the fact that I paid ~12 euros for 7 macaroons.  It didn't seem so bad; until I paid off my credit card bill with the currency conversion back to US dollars. 
I was quite excited to taste Pierre Herme's macaroons after always reading about them in various food blogs. I also wanted to taste these macaroons, so that I had an idea of what I was striving for in the kitchen.

I was wondering why all my macarons seemed to have a brown autumn tone to them, until I drew the conclusion that Pierre Herme must offer macaroons to match the season. 

Here's our box of macaroons. 

Creme Brulee, Salted Caramel, Green Tea and Chestnut, Chocolate and Cassis, Coing and Rose (Pear and Rose), Chocolate and Passion Fruit, Dark Chocolate.

The white truffle macaroon had to be packaged separately from the rest of the macaroons, because the aroma would overpower the other macaroons. The white truffle macaroon was surprisingly good, but I'd have to say that my favorite was the Chocolate and Passion Fruit and the Green Tea and Chestnut. 

Pierre Herme macaroons were very flavorful and contained a lot of filling.  I also liked how there were a lot of non-traditional flavors to choose from. If I had to choose between Pierre Herme and Laduree, I think I'd choose Laduree's macaroons because I think there was more balance between the outershell and the filling.

Here is another dessert that we tried from Pierre Herme.  I think it was called a chocolate box or something. The chocolate was good, but I'd reccommend spending your money on macarons instead of this dessert. 

London and Paris~Random Foods

Oh my goodness, it feels like I never have enough time in the day to sit down and blog. I really enjoy blogging about Mike and my food adventures, but there are only so many free hours left in the day after we come home from work. We've chosen to hang out with friends and participate in other activities, and at the end of the year there are always much more get togethers because of all the holidays. 
   The other night I actually had some time to crop pictures in photoshop and set up some blog posts as Mike watched football and was excited to find out that he's in the finals for his fantasy football league.  Here are some of the miscellaneous pictures of the different foods that we ate in the UK and Paris. 

A McDonald's apple pie was the first snack we ate in London. Can you believe it?  Mike adamently wanted to order an apple pie at McDonald's.  At first I was a little confused, but then I realized that McDonald's apple pies in foreign countries are DEEP-FRIED.  In general, most McDonald's serve baked apple pies. I've heard that there are some McDonald's in aiports or Wal-marts that serve fried apple pies, but I checked the DFW airport and several Walm-marts and this has not been true in Texas.  There's even a website that you can find the McDonald's that serves fried pies. 

My breakfast in London. We had to wake up early to catch our tour bus, so I bought a bottled mango lassi yogurt drink. How cool is that?  

Spinach and goat cheese quiche.

"French Pizza Bread with lardo" (I hope that wasn't real lard on it. I think it was topped with cheese and mayonnaise.

A rolo McFlurry at McDonald's. We didn't order this, but I thought it was neat to see a different flavored mcflurry flavor.

Texas Restaurants~Fireside Pies and La Duni

My last book club meeting with the girls started off with dinner at Fireside Pies, some shopping therapy at Nordstrom Rack, and commenced with dessert at La Duni. It was a nice night with good food and great company. 

I forgot the name of the salad we ordered, but it was good. It contained pears, cranberries, pecans(?), cheese, and a vinaigrette.  I thought it was funny that of the four of us, three of us did not like the strong tasting Gorgonzola cheese, yet were too polite to tell the whole group. Mental note to self, voice my opinion on my finicky food choices.

Peta Pie-Goat Cheese, balsamic mustard portabellos, arugula, roasted red peppers, and pine nuts.  Yummy!

Fireside (Wagyu beef?) meatball pizza-It was interesting to see a pizza with six large meatballs, but this pizza was surprisingly tasty.  I always wondered how people ate those meatball subs from Subway. I conquered this pizza by smashing those meatballs and distributing on the top of my slice.

After dinner and shopping, we went to, La Duni's is a family-owned Latin Cafe. Apparently this place has a great brunch and dinner menu.  Even though we were there at about 8pm at night, there were still diners in the restaurant, and they all seemed to be enjoying their meals.  Mike and I will have to check this place out in the future.

We had started the night off with pizza at Fireside Pies, so we decided to order the Duni Cake Sample Platter ($21) which consisted of four pieces of cake. The regular price per piece was $7.25, so  it's like we received one cake piece free.   

Cuatro Leches Cake-You only need to know a little bit of Spanish to know that there are 4 types of cream in this cake. No, it goes one cream beyond a tres leche cake.  Although I'm not exactly sure where and what the fourth type of cream is.

Panque de Lemon-Vanilla sponge cake, layered with a lemon-lime citrus custard.

Rollo de Canela y Nuez (I have no idea what that means...rolled something)-It was basically a dense sticky bun/cinnamon roll, topped with caramelized pecans and served with ice cream. This totally could have been executed better. If only it were a warm, indulgent, gooey cinnabun type roll/brioche, this would have been delicious. 

Venezuelan Triple Chocolate Truffle Cake-Espresso Chocolate cake layered with milk, semi-sweet, and dark chocolate truffle.

We all thought that the cakes were average tasting and a bit on the dry side. I felt like the cakes almost had a texture similar to cornbread (which is not a good thing in my book, I enjoy soft fluffy cakes).  One of the girls (who loves La Duni) mentioned that the cakes were not as good as she remembered. We're giving La Duni the benefit of the doubt and are assuming that the pastry chef was on vacation when we went there).

La Duni
4620 McKinney Avenue
214.520.7300
They do not accept reservations

Fireside Pies
2820 N Henderson Ave
Dallas, TX 75206

Highlights from our trip to London and Paris

Hi Everyone! We're back from our whirlwind week-long trip to London and Paris! No more than a couple days back from our trip abroad, I had to board a plan for work travel which lasted until yesterday (Friday).  Mike caught a cold the day we arrived back in Texas, so he's been nursing that cold all week while I was gone. I'm not sure how he was nursing that cold because when I came home all the fruits and veggies we had bought previously were still in the fridge, a frozen pizza disappeared from the freezer, and a bunch of Panda Express fortune cookies were on the kitchen counter. 

We'll slowly try to post all the pictures of our wonderful trip in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, here are some photo highlights from our trip. 

Paris

Big Ben

Buckingham Palace

Stonehenge