Ladurée Macarons

French macaroons are my new obsession ... these delicate, tiny and delicious pieces of heavenly indulgence. I've always found them incredibly elegant, feminine and pretty but I couldn't tell you why I'm bonkers about them all of the sudden, apart from the obvious reasons. It's their airiness and versatility and the fact that they're everything but simple, generic and they make me think of Paris which itself is representative of feminine elegance. I'm sure Ina Garten would be delighted... "They're gonna be delicious!" =)

Now that I think of it, it's probably when I read about famous shoe designer Christian Louboutin designing gift boxes for French pâtisserie brand Ladurée that I learned about their macaroons and became intrigued. As a fashion-conscious girl myself and having been found contemplating buying classic nude Louboutin peeptoes before, I was firstly more interested in owning something Sex-and-the-City-Carrie-like by the red-soled shoe artistthan the actual macaroons. Soon after I discovered Ladurée's website and researched macarons, I decided I definitely had to see and taste them for myself and looked up where to get them - thankfully in London (because they don't mail products at all, boo-hoo!), what a coincidence!

Having shown my boyfriend and London novice around town the day before and having done enough sightseeing it was finally time to make our way over to Harrod's, the world-famous, super posh and much-loved department store in Knightsbridge. I've been there many times and I love their massive, amazing food hall but somehow Ladurée had escaped my eyes to this very day.

  Knowing I had simply had to buy a few of these quite pricey but worth every penny delectables, I had a hard time trying to decide which flavours to pick. Neither did it help that the French sales assistant had a strong accent and a heavy cold, resulting in me having to make him repeat what he'd said to me about 5 times... how embarrassing. When he told me he was a Frenchman with a flu I had to laugh and told him he should have spoken French to me in the first place and we wouldn't have had any communication problems! What is it with French people trying to speak English and English speakers trying to speak French that makes them impossible to understand? Most other accents are fine but these two just don't go together at all.

Anyway, I did get my macaroons in the end and promised myself that I would be back very soon - thinking of Dublin where I would buy the biggest available Louboutin-filled box of macaroons available to treat myself. They didn't have those particular gift boxes in Harrod's, you see. Being a big old glutton I've now realized that these boxes don't come for free anyway and by now I'd rather spend the money on even more macaroons than on a fancy box! Which tells you I loved them, they were truly delicious. Even the rose one I had to eat over a month later, because I hadn't been at home for Christmas, when you're supposed to eat them within 3 days, but who counts? The flavours I had were Rose, Orange Blossom, Salted Caramel, Licorice (surprisingly good!), Red Berries and Chestnut but I would like to try every single one from their assortment soon. Read on and beware of drooling!

http://www.laduree.fr/index.htm