The 'O' matters....a lot

I'm a huge fan of macaron. Please don't confuse them with 'macaroon' which is a curious mix of coconut, egg whites, and sweetened condensed milk. At best, this macaroon is a too-sweet, coconut transfer system. As worst, it's absolutely nasty.

The one 'o' macaron that I love is primarily associated with the French. For me, it is primarily associated with Pierre Herme. Check this post out from my visit to Herme last January.....I'm still thinking about it and haven't even come close to having an American version of macaron that I was satisfied with......well, until now.

So, what's to love about a macaron? Let's start with the cookie. In its basic form, it's a sandwich cookie. The cookie part is almond flour, confectioner's sugar, egg whites and sugar syrup. Yeah, you got it. It's a meringue cookie. Crispy on the outside, moist on the inside. The filling can be butter cream, gels, Nutella, basically anything that can be a filling.

Last week, I decided to add macarons to our cookie tray that we present with out checks. So, I let the tinkering begin. Once I had solved various issues including browing, chunky almond meal, cracking cookies, etc, I decided to roll the macarons out and in true Sheppard Mansion style, I decided to use our homemade raspberry verbena jelly that I preserved in August with Tim Brown's top of the line fruits.



So, here's the finished product. I'm still working on a chocolate macaron filled with nutella and a pretzel macaron with salted chocolate ganache. Stay tuned!