Stephanie Bueche Hansen loves how kids respond to her macarons.
The hand-painted, scratch-made cookies at her Coursey Boulevard bakery, Les Amis Bake Shoppe, come in a range of technicolor flavors and styles.
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But the best flavor for a kid? It’s whatever their favorite color is right now.
They can’t wait to get their hands on the aqua-blue macaron covered with rainbow sprinkles (the Cake Batter flavor). They’re dying to bite into a purple one (Chocolate Lavender).
“They don’t really care about what it might taste like,” Hansen says. “It’s cool because it encourages kids to try flavors they wouldn’t otherwise.”
Dainty on the outside, the magic of the macaron is how it crumbles when you bite into it. The airy shells melt into the creamy filled centers. The macaron—not to be confused with the macaroon, its sister cookie made with flaky coconut—is the perfect union of textures.
Plus, these delicate discs are like works of art.
Common requests at Les Amis lately include macaron-adorned wedding and birthday cakes, or hand-painted client logos for a custom-branded treat.
“They are the show piece, the centerpiece,” Hansen says. “I like that you can do so much with them.”
But to truly appreciate a good macaron, you should know there’s a tricky science to them. Any seasoned TV-baking-competition viewer has learned these meringue-based cookie sandwiches are one of the more intimidating desserts to make.
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“It’s not that they’re difficult; they’re temperamental,” Hansen explains. “There are so many steps to making to them, and if you screw up, you typically won’t know until they’re out of the oven. And even then, it’s hard to know why, where or when you went wrong.”
They’re so tricky, in fact, that some local grocers, coffee shops and even bakeries commission Les Amis to make their macarons for them. The small-but-mighty bakery might churn out a couple thousand scratch-made macarons in a single week. But that’s OK. It has its recipe down to an art. lesamisbakeshoppe.com
This article was originally published in the February 2022 issue of 225 magazine.