Macarons

Since macarons are the biggest craze in Paris, and crossing over to Asia and the US... plus Angel loves them, this trip has been more a macaron trip than monuments. You should see her face glow when we come out of a patisserie with a bunch of different flavors. Or how sad she gets when the macarons get jostled about and accidentally punched in (they are not made for traveling, that's for sure!).
We have tried Laduree and McCafe's macarons (written about on the 2nd day of our trip), Angelina, Pierre Herme, and today Arnaud Larher.
From Laduree, the Lily of the Valley and Violet Cassis were the best.
McCafe's best is a vanilla macaron that tasted like a really rich creme anglais-based vanilla bean ice cream.
Angelina's Mont Blanc paled in comparison to their famed Mont Blanc cake, as we couldn't taste the chestnut at all.


But the Irish Cream macaron was very flavorful and creamy.

I LOVED their mandarin orange & passion macaron. I loved the intense burst of citrus & passionfruit right when you put in your mouth, and the dense texture of the cookie helped make the macaron taste like a sinfully rich dessert versus a light fruity dessert.

Herme: what can you say? The King of macarons. His textures and flavor are constrained, refined, and light as air or dense as melted chocolate, depending on what is desirable. The Ispahan (rose & lychee) is one of my favorites, we both really liked the Jasmine, but from there we differ. His olive oil is refined, and the ganache texture is to die for... heavy and creamy! Yum! I could understand why people would like this one, but I would not buy it again because the olive oil taste made it a little too fatty for me in flavor, although it certainly added to the fatty coating texture.


Apricot and Saffron are two very different flavors, ones I would never have thought to put together, but they worked surprisingly well... enough so that I would say the next time we make paella, to add in chopped apricots or raisins! Angel could understand the concept, but thought she was eating paella... which, in that case, she'd prefer the paella. I really liked how they finely chopped the dried apricots into thin threads and mixed it with ganache, so that you get almost a pate de fruit texture.


The chocolate and passionfruit was our least favorite. It smelled so promising! The passionfruit is very fragrant, but adding dark chocolate to the ganache just ruins the delicate sweet & sour balance of the fruit.

Angel insisted on a strawberry wasabi at Herme. I balked at hearing wasabi... especially in dessert! She loved the combination, but I just could NOT get over the wasabi flavor.

Although I did like the texture of the cookie itself, this one is a different cookie recipe base, as it almost has a marshmallowy texture to it.

We both enjoyed the strawberry balsamic vinegar. It was a bit like Smucker's strawberry jam. This one also had a marshmallowy cookie base.

The last Herme we ate was a caramel beurre de sel, although I really couldn't taste the salt. Angel thought it tasted like burnt caramel, while I thought it tasted like just barely cooked caramel (almost too sugary).

I really enjoyed the ganache texture though, as it had an almost foamy quality to it.

Angel heard of Arnaud Larher's patisserie near the Sacre Coeur, and supposedly he's known for his macarons as well. After walking back from Sacre Coeur, we detoured into his shop, where we bought... well... by the end of the day, we were so tired we didn't really remember the flavor descriptions.
So... our re-creation of the flavors, based on what we could figure out:
Rose & Lychee~ the lychee was a big hunk in the middle, so it tasted more lychee than rose.

Violet & Cassis~ Not much violet there. Angel thought it tasted like cough syrup so she refused to eat anymore, although it IS over 1 euro for each macaron, so I yelled at her about it. She still refused. What a brat.

I'll admit the cassis had way to much sugar, and when you drink water immediately afterward, the water mixes with the cassis so almost like drinking cough syrup, but it wasn't all that bad... compared to....
Framboise & something... this tasted EXACTLY like Lucky Charms cereal! It's kinda amazing but weird. It had that marshmallow flavor but the crunch from the cookie is equivalent to the cereal crunch.

This one tasted like a shoe. It was supposed to be some spice with framboise, but even Jen didn't eat anymore after 1 bite. Pot calling the kettle black, no? "What a brat!"