the premier of chian and fang's food trail in paris has to start with a bang, which is why we'll talk about nothing but macarons today. according to wikipedia, a macaron is a french pastry dating back to the 18th century, made of egg whites, almond powder, icing sugar and sugar. sounds simple enough, but apparently it is extremely difficult to make good macarons.
the pride of france
in 1930, laduree, a teashop and pastry-shop in paris started creating a new version of the macaron with a ganache filling in the middle, resulting in macarons which are crunchy on the outside but moist, chewy and flavourful on the inside. (thanks wiki, what would i do without you.)
taste explosion
laduree was definitely my number one must-find place when i was in paris, and if chian wants to try it, she's gonna walk the whole of paris if she must to find it. lo and behold, laduree has a few branches and there's one conveniently located just along paris' most famous street, champs elysees.
high class tea shop
the first time i was there, the waiting line for the tea room was extremely long, perhaps due to the public holiday week. we went into the takeaway section which was also pretty crowded, but that didn't really matter because we were more interested in the beautifully crafted pastries on display.
patient patrons picking pastries
miniature pastries
everything was soooooo beautiful. even the normal pastries like croissants were glistering and shining in full glory under the romantic lighting of the shop. needless to say, the macarons were the real stars, with so many different colours i just felt like buying them all!
so many colours, so many flavours
well, except one small macaron costs a whopping 1.50euros (~S$3.20), so being kiam siap singaporeans fang and i bought 2 macarons just to try it out first. did i mention the packaging was very beautiful too, except it costs even more if you want to put the macarons in one of the nicely decorated boxes.
a grand total of 2 macarons in our bag
even the paper bag looks so grand
the first one we bit into, caramel flavoured macaron. i was expecting the usual overly sweet stinging taste of caramel of set in, only to be pleasantly surprised at how smooth the ganache was, and the best part - it wasn't sweet at all! the domes that contained the ganache was crunchy and laced with bits of yummy almond bits on the inside.
absolutely delicious caramel flavoured - my favourite
crunchy on the outside, smooth and fragrant on the inside
we also bought the croissant because we've never seen such a shiny croissant before. seriously, i think they waxed their pastries before selling them or something. it didn't disappoint either, was extremely fluffy and tasty!
delicious
apparently, laduree's macarons are the best in paris and i can see why. those were my first macarons and the only ones i tried, but i'm pretty sure it'd be tough to find another store that's able to match it.
laduree! laduree!
i'm in love with macarons now. fang was so sweet to surprise me with a box of them on the last day, the rest of the flavours were all super duper yummy too!
pretty box, pretty macarons, pretty good way to end a trip
75, avenue des Champs Elysées - 75008 Paris
3 comments:
Is Laduree Champs Elysees the most magnificent patasserie ever?! They have something like 45 pastry chefs. Like woah. And my fav fav fav is the rose flavoured maccie. Mmmmhhmmmmm!
waaaaa. this is really an eye-opener.
haha how xiang we should try to open a franchise in singapore! it'd probably cost lots of money though..
heh i'm glad you enjoyed the post ah mike!
Post a Comment