Confections

I feel as if I am very late to this particular bandwagon--according to a commenter to a recent Consumerist story, they're going to be where cupcakes are now, trendy and overexposed--but they're new to me, and so I'm sorry, but I am going to talk about macarons some more. There are pretty pictures! Well, pictures. (And you can click on them to see much, much larger versions, and should.)

These are the Laduree macarons in their charming traceried and garlanded gold-and-violet-and-black box. The sad fact is, though, that the macarons themselves are not really all that pretty: the edges are kind of munged up, and the cookies and fillings both are widely varied in thickness. And, as I said before, the aroma is minimal, and the texture and taste are not all that could be hoped for.

Here is the box of Hevin macarons. My god, is it ever lovely! Anyone who thinks blue and brown don't go together* just needs to look at this package.

And here are the glorious Hevin macarons themselves. Shiny, uniform in thickness, loaded with lovely filling. They are aesthetically pleasing to an almost unbelievable degree (after, it needs to be said, banging around in a knapsack in violent Parisian heat for a couple of hours) before you even set your teeth to them. And the aroma when you open the box! And the texture, sequentially crisp and yielding and chewy and tender! It's almost enough to make you believe in a deity.

If you ever go to Paris, you must go to Galeries Lafayette and buy some of these. Trust me.

*Since brown is generally a member of the orange colour family, and blue and orange are complementary colours, it stands to reason that blue and brown could work beautifully together, as they do here.