In November, we went to Volt restaurant in Frederick and Top Chef Bryan Voltaggio served a macaron course as an amuse-bouche one Caesar salad and the other beet. This tasting got me and Tiffany interested in macarons, and inspired us to try making some on out own. So for Christmas I got her the cookbook I love Macarons. So we tried making them. They came out very differently then the ones from Volt restaurant. And while we did enjoy the outcome of most of the macarons made, we still wondered if there were things we could do to make them better. The main thing that we felt may be wrong is the cooking time and temperature, since some cookies seemed to have burnt tops and not cooked on the inside. (This may have to do with elevation of 1600 ft, and not as an error in the cookbook though)

Last week I went to Baltimore to visit a friend and decided to try getting some macarons to use to compare bakery macarons and the ones we made. While telling my friend about wanting to get some of these for Tiffany for Easter he decided to call some of his bakers to ask if they had macarons for me. The bakery he called said that they do have macaroons. I asked him to make sure they had the kind I was looking for, the french style where they are little cookie sandwiches made with almond flour, not the coconut dipped in chocolate kind.

Needless to say that this bakery didn't have them, but I remembered a facebook post a while back that mentioned that a bakery in Baltimore sells the french style macarons. Patisserie Poupon at the corner or President and Baltimore Streets, is the only place in Baltimore that I know of currently making the French style of macarons.

When I got there they had five flavors available; lemon, raspberry, chocolate, pistachio, and hazelnut. I bought 2 pounds of mixed macarons at $16 a pound, with about 38-40 cookies per pound. Not to bad of a price in my opinion since the almond flour used to make them costs 10 a pound at the grocery store.

I first tried the chocolate macaron, outer shell nice and airy, breaks apart easily in your mouth and still a little moist in the center, but it was filled with chocolate ganache. While I must admit I do enjoy chocolate ganache, I don't think it works very well with macarons. It's just to heavy of a filling for such a light cookie. When I made macarons I filled them with a butter cream filling, and I think that a chocolate butter cream filling my work a little better.

Then I tried the raspberry macarons stuffed with a raspberry jelly, much better then the ganache filled macarons. Then I tried the lemon macarons, that's the flavor I wanted, the light fluffy cookies with a light lemon cream in between them, DELICIOUS. After that I tried the hazelnut macaron and that one was even better in my opinion.

While many bakeries will have Macaroons on their menu, make sure you a specific in describing the kind you want. The french style of macaron is two very light airy cookies that are sandwiched together usually with a cream filling, and the more commonly found macaroon is made with coconut and then dipped in chocolate.