Bouchon Bakery - March 24, 2011

This must be a joke played on the King’s New Clothes Syndrome.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Macaron

Eating is a multi-sensory experience; one looks at it, feels it, smells it, tastes it and, occasionally, hears it – i.e. the satisfying crisp shattering produced by biting into a true macaron. The appearance of this enormous, grape-colored monster – the largest I had ever seen even in New York – was the size of my palm, minus the fingers. The smooth shell – which returned a rather light tapping noise, indicating a thin outer layer – gave off a whiff of sweetish scent and the nuttiness of the peanut butter filling. Now that I had smelled it, caressed it, put it against my ears in front of all in the exposed area of Time Warner Center, I could proceed to tasting.

The ultra-thin outer layer –my prediction satisfactorily confirmed – crumbled too readily; it revealed an unusually moist interior, which was as light as a cake. There is sweet and there is sweet; to the latter cloying sweetness this macaron belonged. On the contrary, the thick layer of filling was creamy, nutty and somehow even elegant – a gentrified version of peanut butter cream. This is why I presume, and I must presume, that this is a joke, a mere joke on New York’s appetite for excess in terms of size and sweetness and its absolute indifference to texture, for in truth, this grotesquely and unaesthetically colored sandwich “cookie” shared more characteristics with Hostess’ SuzieQs than a macaron.

Bouchon Bakery
Address:  10 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10019
Phone:  (212) 823-9366