Macarons are pieces of pastry perfection, achieving an ideal texture and consistency so that they are crispy on the outside but melt in your mouth is the right balance between science and art.

What are macarons?

maca·ron

[ˌmakəˈrɒn]

Sweet, small, round French cookie sandwich made of meringue, almond flour, sugar, and food colouring and garnished with a variety of fillings.

Although the macaron first arrived as a simple chewy baked almond cookie, it evolved into the double-biscuit version, its halves held together by a variety of fillings, which were likely developed in the 1830s. Some scholars claim that chef Pierre Desfontaines of the famous Ladurée pastry shop in Paris created it in 1930. He is widely credited with creating the colorful varieties now known as Paris macarons. Outside the capital, there are numerous regional variations, some of the best known being the macarons of Chartres, Montmorillon and Amiens. Regional differences largely focus on the fillings employed, which include fruit, jelly, cream, coconut, ganache and jam, with different spices and sometimes liqueurs, such as the sweet white wine in Saint-Émilion macarons, used in the dough.

What do I think of macarons?

Now that we know a little bit about where it comes from, we put aside a bit of the myth that they are purely French and we also understand why there are so many different methods to make them.

 For me, it has taken me many hours of reading blogs, books, videos, visits to other countries to understand and see how the world moves around these naughty little ones. Countless hours of searching, kilos of almond flour wasted, entire trays that went to waste... They had to go through before I finally made it.

I think my obsession started about 7 years ago, I confess that I didn't even know what they were, I had never paid attention to them even though I had many years of baking. I was in a pastry class with my friend Mauren from Lunada Mode and I remember she told me that she was going to take a course with a French chef to learn how to make Macarons and I had no idea what they were, but it turns out that I was pregnant at the time and I said: "Bring me one".

The following week, she, as a good friend, brought me raspberry macarons. I remember perfectly the texture and taste they had, and I said to myself, well, it can't be that difficult (today I laugh at myself). Maybe doing it wasn't that difficult, but perfection... That's another story.

The truth is, I've read so many tricks and tips that people swear will come out but the truth is that most of them are pure lies. It doesn't matter if it's raining or if you live in a country with a lot of humidity (Hello, Costa Rica?), you just use patch paper/parchment, age the egg whites, dry the almond dough in the oven, let the macarons dry in the open air, hit the skein, be delicate with the macaronage-NO, NOTHING LIKE THAT, it doesn't matter which side of the bed we get up from and I'm not even going to start with the ''macaron gods', None of that matters.

The method and success depends on our own taste, on knowing our ingredients and mainly our oven, also, practice is indispensable. I've made a LOT of mistakes in my journey, and I still do, especially if I try to experiment with a new technique, or with new equipment or ingredients, so I believe in having notes where we write down everything that went right and what went wrong, that we also change in each of the attempts we make.