I first had a macaron before they became popular in South Africa. The Lindt chocolate studio had just opened up in the suburb in which I live and they had various flavours of macaron for sale. I had never seen these petit little ‘cookies’ before and I was super excited to try them. Being boring, I tried a chocolate one.

My heart stopped with the first bite. The crisp meringue-like outside followed by the browny like moist inside and then the velvety ganache, everything was perfect and in that moment I knew that I had to perfect the macaron.

I did not know how hard my journey would be to perfecting these deceptively easy looking treats. I scoured the internet for any recipes that I could find and came across one that seemed like it would work. So I gathered all the ingredients and took on the daunting challenge of making them for the first time.

I failed.

I continued to fail for the next 10 or so times I tried to make them. I was determined to get them right and just could not. I always ended up either getting little feet on my macarons but then the being hollow on the inside or them being nice and browny like but then having no feet. I tried many recipes some using a french meringue, some an italian meringue, some saying not to allow them to dry and some saying dry for 30 minutes. I just couldn’t get them right.

Finally, one day it just happened. My mom bought me a recipe book just for the art of making macarons called, “Secrets of Macarons by José Maréchal”. Using this book I perfected the art of macaron making and learned all the little tricks and secrets needed for success.

I will post a recipe soon with all the tips I learned from my many failures.