I adore macaroons.
Those French little crisp, round, slightly imperfect-looking almond sweets that melt in your mouth and come in every colour of the rainbow.
Good macaroons are pretty hard to come by. Macaroons are really difficult to make well, because of the skill required to keep the almond pastry at a consistent temperature in order to achieve that light, fluffy, yet crisp texture.
My friend, KK, was passing through Paris en route to Singapore, so I requested for a box of those pretty little sweets from an established Parisian pâtissière - La Durée.
The macaroons came wrapped in an exquisite decorative pale green box, carefully encased in tracing paper. KK said that La Durée even offered different coloured boxes for their customers to choose from – red, blue, green etc.
As I carefully unwrapped my prize, those colourful jewels stared enticingly at me from the box....they looked so pretty in their casing that I couldn’t bear to take them out to eat them!
But temptation gave in.
I picked up the signature caramel one and slowly bit into it.
Crisp exterior gave way to a soft, chewy texture just underneath, which quickly led to a smooth, creamy caramel centre.
The sensation was indescribably heavenly.
My dad happened to see me entranced in mid-macaroon-savouring-pleasure and promptly came lusting after my new sweets. It took a lot of quick reflex and agile on-the-spot feet-swivelling and hand-swiping to push the box out of sight and convince him he must have been mistaken.
Later on that night, while my family was tucked away in their rooms, I deftly ran into the kitchen, dug out my La Durée box from its secret hiding place inside the fridge and picked out the pretty pink raspberry-flavoured one.
I must have looked crazed sitting in the corner of the kitchen, protecting my little box of macaroons with an oh-so-satisfied look of utter delight on my face.
I am NOT sharing these! J
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