June Cookie of the Month: Macaron

This month the kids made for their grandparents a very delicate French cookie called the macaron. Yes, it's kind of like a macaroon.

How do they differ, you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked. You're so smart and inquisitive ... that's why we like you. And you're good looking, too, which never hurts.

Anyway, both cookies are meringue-based. Linguistically, they're based on the Italian word for meringue (which is macarone or maccarone).

They're actually becoming popular here in NYC because pastry shops have found that people like the cuteness of gluing two flavors with butter cream to make a new flavor (ie, pistachio-orange or chocolate-wasabi).

If you're interested in making your own, they're actually simple to make. Beat egg whites and sugar; mix with confectioner's sugar, almond powder and food coloring; and bake. Then glue two cookies together with ganache. With kids, though, it involved cleaning up melted chocolate chips from under the fridge (a long story), storing cookie dough in the fridge because it got too runny while we were cleaning, breaking roughly 1/3 of these fragile cookies while lifting them from the baking sheet, and breaking even more while smearing on the ganache.