The Macaron Diaries: April 18th, 2009

I fup duck my macarons this time, bad. I had just enough ingredients for all three batches, with really nothing extra leftover. Unfortunately, due partially to the emotional chaos that is my life and partially to David Liebovotz tendency to mix measuring units in his recipes between volume versus weight (shoulder some of that weight, David, damn you), I undermeasured the egg whites for the chocolate batch. During prep I used "two large egg whites". They sat around on my counter for two days. Saturday late morning I beat them, added sugar and continued to beat until I got that gorgeous whippy glossy consistency. I then attempted to fold in the dry ingredients and it was like folding all the the sand in the Gobi Desert into a a tiny koi pond. Fuggetabowtit. Le heavy sigh.

Very quickly I realized that another trip to the store would yield me more eggs, but not "aged" eggs. This could all go south after hours of work. So I scrapped the project and we piled into the car. It took us 3 hours to visit 3 LA bakery/pastry stores & 1 ice cream shop, whereas making three flavors of macarons takes more like six, including all the wait time. The first macaron tasting extravaganza underway.

First stop, Bottega Louie.


We had sampled the macs at Bottega Louie a couple weeks ago with C. So we stopped here, close to home, at the beginning of the journey. Because I only bought 6 macarons here, the woman working the counter threw them haphazardly in a bag, immediately crushing the side of one of them. These are delicate. I asked for a box and was informed a box hold thirteen. I requested one anyway, because I am fancy like that. It is a beautiful box. The manager type person gave it a nice bow.

Next stop, La Provence in Beverly Hills on Olympic.

La Provence was both annoyingly busy partnered with annoyingly slow. The guy behind the counter had a 10 minute conversation with a customer about how they refuse to let the men working there handle the cash register, therefore he is not allowed to ring customers up. So he stood there doing nothing while we all waited for the female workers to finish helping people. Seems like a good system. The customer commented that no wonder the male staff always seem to quit quickly. Fascinating. To avoid any box issues I ordered 8, exactly the number to go in their pretty little box.

The last place we hit was Lemonade in WeHo. I am immature, and the entire time sang the schoolyard rhyme, "Milk, milk, lemonade. Around the corner, fudge is made.", over and over. They only served two flavors of the cookies. Tossed in a bag. To hades with presentation.


Les macarons.

So, starting at the pink ones at the top at around 10 o'clock and heading clockwise, I will describe. The medium size pink, green and two shades of brown are from La Provence and my least favorite. The pink are rose, and T says they taste like an old lady's panties. Or something in that region. Not good. The green are pistachio. Yuck. The darker brown is chocolate, good. The lighter brown is caramel fleur de sel. That one was pretty damn good. The caramel was leaky though, which makes me feel better about my own leaky caramel de sel. The smallest orange, yellow and brown are from Bottega Louie. The orange are the brilliant passionfruit and far an away the best I have ever had. Brown, chocolate. Good. Yellow were lemon and they were just fine. Nothing to write home about. The huge macs are from milk, milk, Lemonade. Yellow is lemon and brown is chocolate. We cut them into manageable pieces. These.were.delicious.

We also accompanied the macs with ice cream from Scoops. Vanilla Oreo (yawn as a concept but delicious as a flavor), Currant Black Cherry Brandy (juicy, dirty, boozey yumminess), and Guinness Tiramisu (orgasmic ice creaminess). I couldn't pry the containers from peoples' hands long enough to get a pic.

Bottega Louie
700 S Grand Avenue (In the Brockman Building)
Los Angeles, CA 90014
(213) 802-1470
http://www.bottegalouie.com/

La Provence
11677 San Vicente Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90049
(310) 442-1144
www.laprovencecafe.com

Lemonade
9001 Beverly Blvd
West Hollywood, CA 90048
(310) 247-2500
www.lemonadela.com

Scoops
712 N Heliotrope Dr
Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 906-2649