Categories: ChocolateCookiesDessertsGiveawaySweets

Makecarons: A review and a Giveaway!

A few weeks back I had the opportunity to try Francois Payard’s “MakeCaron™” box, which contained the ever so elusive macaron shells.

The third-generation pastry chef, Payard, is a very well respected French pastry chef with pastry shops all over the world. Francois Payard has made macarons all of his life, just as his father and grandfather did. He introduced them to NYC in 1993 and now he wants America to take over the flavors.

Payard’s creation, MakeCaron, which launched in November last year, is basically the base cookie of macarons. After watching dozens of “make your own” macaron videos and reading articles online, Francois realized that macaron shells are very temperamental in the regular kitchen (I can vouch for that- with my own set of failures at attempting macarons and the occasional successes). Plus he felt there are plenty of steps and small details to take into consideration to achieve perfect consistency which might not be everyone’s ball game.

Chef Payard thinks that “if you make burgers, you don’t bake the buns”. So, why not have the same concept for macarons.

The MakeCaron shells are made with almond flour and then colored with food coloring so most of them do taste the same. But generally its the filling that gives the macaron its flavor, not the cookie. With Payard’s MakeCarons you can decide what your macaron will taste like, making the end product uniquely yours, without the added hassle of following all the tips and tricks to achieve the perfect shell in your kitchen.

You can fill your MakeCaron shells with any filling of your choice- chocolate ganache, ice cream, raspberry buttercream or anything else your creative mind comes up with. As long as it is sticky and has a gooey consistency, you are good.

The MakeCarons come in a very well packaged box that has inserts that perfectly fit the macarons in place. Once you finish filling your macarons, you can put them back in the box and gift them too! The packaging also ensures you receive your shells in once piece, with no crushed or broken macaron shells.

On receiving my box of Makecarons to try, I decided to fill the shells with the traditional ganache (since I love me a good ganache filled macaron) and a chai spiced buttercream. Both of them tasted great. I sent the filled MakeCaron box with V to his office and he told me everyone told him to let me how much they enjoyed them. I kind of felt like I cheated by not making the shells, but well it was nice not to worry about aged egg whites, humidity and shells with no feet for once! I was sold!

I thought I will share the chai spiced filling recipe today but somehow I seem to have misplaced the paper I had written it on. I have a decent idea of what I added but since I do not have the exact proportions I will share the recipe another day.

So now lets just talk about the Giveaway, shall we?!

MAKECARON GIVEAWAY!

The lovely people at Francois Payard are giving away 3 boxes of MakeCarons (one of each color- raspberry, chocolate and vanilla with each box valued at $22) to one lucky reader of the Novice Housewife. All you have to do is to use the Rafflecopter below to enter in the giveaway. The giveaway will end on 27th January and is open only for people residing in the US (even if you don’t live in the US but know someone who would appreciate this, feel free to enter!)
All the best!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclaimer: While I was given the box of MakeCarons for free, I was not paid for this review and the opinions in this blog post are solely mine.

For more goodies, please do check Francois Payard’s website.