Laduree~French Macarons

Mike and my first experience at Laduree was in London.  We were walking through Harrod's in London and I saw a Laduree cafe in the store. I wanted to wait until we went to Paris to try Laduree's macarons, but decided that the macarons would probably taste the same in both London and Paris. 

Chocolate (traditional flavor), black currant violet (unusual flavor combination), salted caramel (salesperson's choice).  All the flavors were delicious, and Mike and I had a difficult time deciding which flavor we liked the best.  The chocolate had a standard rich chocolate flavor and creamy chocolate ganache, the black currant macaron was light and filled with a fruity jam, and the salted caramel has the perfect balance between sweet and salty. 

I decided that the salted caramel macaron was the best flavor macaron that we purchased.  This macaron was so good! I didn't think that I would enjoy salted caramel as much as I did. This started my mild obsession of caramel-making (I will post about this in the coming weeks). 

Here's the window display of a  Laduree's that we passed in Paris.   We were walking around in search of Pierre Herme, so we did not purchase macarons again. 

Look at all the pretty colored macarons.

Here's a pictures of the pretty pastries.

Instead of ordering macarons, we purchased this palmier (palm leaf cookie that had a shiny almost shellacked caramel coating on it.  This is the best tasting palmier that I ate in Paris.  It must have contained oodles of calories from all the butter and sugar caramelized to perfection; but it was what I imagine a perfect palm leaf cookie to taste like.

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. 

Matcha (Green Tea) Macarons!

 

This past Christmas, my friend Erika sent me "I love macarons" by Hisako Ogita.  I would always talk about macarons in lab with her, so in her cute letter to me she wrote, "I saw this book and thought about you." I've attempted macarons before, but this time decided to try Hisako Ogita's recipe with the macaronage method.  The "macaronage" method involves folding and lifting the batter several times to achieve the correct consistency of the batter to produce perfectly textured macarons.

The recipe for macarons is quite simple.  The base formula consists of almond meal

(I bought mine at Central Market in the bulk foods aisle), powdered sugar, granulated sugar, salt, egg whites, flavoring (I used matcha powder from Matcha Source).  Here's  a picture of the mixture of dry ingredients. 

  

I guess it helps to follow the directions and draw uniform circles on the bottom side of the parchment paper so that your macarons will have a uniform size and shape. 

 

Here's the baked macarons (see their cute little feet!).  I followed the instructions, but tweaked a few things.  I did not follow the author's advice to use organic powdered sugar.  I used the typical (and cheaper) powdered sugar because in reality, both sugars contain some kind of starch (corn or tapioca) so I really think you'd end up with the same finished product.  Maybe I'll conduct an experiment on the effects of organic versus regular powdered sugar for macaron-making and run a sensory test to determine the differences...

 I also reduced the bake time a little because I thought they looked dry and done. 

  I kept rolling my eyes as Mike jokingly critiqued the shape and colors of macarons and said that they were "unacceptable" and then popped them in his mouth. I think he liked them because I left a container at home of the "unacceptable" macarons (there were about 10 pieces) and when I got back from work, they were all gone. 

 

My filled macaron.  Mike thought that a dark chocolate ganache would overpower the matcha macarons, so I ended up spreading whipped cream between two cookies. 

If you want to read more about macarons, check out this blog.  It's really interesting to read about all her adventures in macaron-making.