I’ve already stated on the Ladurée macaron post here how I’m not a devotee of the macs but will appreciate the flavour of a good quality one. In the summer when tasting some with Nicola the most memorable flavour combination I had was lime and basil, it worked really well to my surprise. I may not be a fan of these but it appears my 5 year old has developed a hankering for macarons, when she spotted them in Marks & Spencer’s aisle this week she immediately pointed with her little finger, “I want those!”.
Oldest daughter and I tasted them. My 5 year old’s face expressed some puzzlement after the first chew, her eyebrows do this funny thing of curving into an ‘M’ shape and she paused staring at them silently as if to say, hang on a minute this is not what I was expecting. Deep down she knew mum had not given her the normal macarons.
The Marks & Spencer macarons taste of cheap ingredients. The raspberry flavoured one tasted of jam, that wasn’t my description of it but it’s a good one, after the 5 year old gave it a good inspection she looked up at me smiling and said, “Mum these taste like jam!”. The vanilla flavoured one tasted of a hint of vanilla but the predominant taste was sugar and the chocolate one was probably the worst, it tasted of raw cocoa powder.
The old saying, ‘you get what you pay for’ couldn’t be more true here. I think the Ladurée, Pierre Hermé type of macarons are ridiculous expensive for what I consider inexpensive ingredients in a bakery, what would traditionally be made from leftover egg whites, (having used the yolks in custard based desserts) ground almonds and sugar. And even if the filling was made with expensive ingredients, a little of it goes a long way. Macarons are now a business all by themselves and like any business I’m paying for wages, rent, rates, branding, packaging and profit and I’m fine with that. Rent and rates in central London are eye-watering expensive.
The Marks & Spencer macs costs £5 for 12 macaroons and for Pierre Hermé ones I paid £23 for 12 in October at Selfridges.
I must make something clear, I don’t want to give the impression that I think the only macaroons worth eating are ones you need a mortgage for, there is plenty of room in the marketplace for more affordable ones, ones made by a supermarket chain. What has made me mad enough to want to write about it is the fact that Marks & Spencer with all the power they possess could stop being so greedy and divert more of the profit of these macs back into the quality of the ingredients. There is no reason why they couldn’t make a more flavoursome macaron, no reason at all, if going through the trouble of making something then make it worth eating, if you have to add 50p to the pack then do it. These macarons are the equivalent of those nasty sandwiches you buy, when opening the shells there is very little filling, which happens to be where the flavour comes from, and what little filling there is tastes awful. These macarons ended up in the bin, that’s what I call a waste of £5.
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I’m there with you! Even the supposedly “amazing” macaron places out here in Los Angeles have macarons that just taste like sugar. It isn’t that difficult to produce a flavorful filling that can cut through the macaron shell. Bakers just get lazy and are content to just make the brightest colored macarons rather than the best tasting.