Baked Goods

I am sadly very much influenced by the masses. If someone trendy that I admire says something is good and I think they may be right I'll want to try it. I'm also a sucker for ads. Example being food ads... if I see an advert on TV for beer, I'll want a beer, if there's an ad for McD's I'll crave it for the rest of the day, sad but very true.

With that knowledge you can understand that I'd been hit by the macaroon bug. I spent the majority of my life being a little unwilling to try new things because as a kid I was a bit of a fussy eater and there are certain things I really don't like, no matter how many times I try them (cheese, dried fruit, candied fruit, yoghurt with fruit in, custard, ginger, aniseed/liquorice/fennel, most spirits/liquors), so I'd never ever eaten a macaroon in my life. I was a little dubious as I didn't know what to expect but they look so pretty and I love baked goods (who doesn't?) so in february me and the bf took a trip into Town to go to Ladurée. We went there mostly because they have pretty boxes and quite a few bloggers have raved about them.

I didn't get any pictures because we ate our purchase while sitting in a churchyard and drinking coffee, nut they were nice, really nice. I wasn't sold on them though, I didn't think they were amazing. Sure, the packaging is divine and the colours are a dream, but I wasn't sold enough to pay for the journey into town on a regular basis, although I'd be sure to pop in if I ever got the guts to go to the Chanel boutique.

That has all changed.

While in Lyon last week the bf and I had said we should hunt down a patisserie selling macaroons. We never did do the research but on our first afternoon in town we stumbled upon Pignol, a Lyon based chain of bakery/patisseries which had amazing cakes and macaroons in the window. I immediately wanted to buy one of everything in the shop, but we went for a small sample of the said snack. The actual macaroons are smaller and more round than those of Ladurée, but you could see they had more filling and they were flipping amazing. Seriously. The Vanilla was by far my favourite, it tasted like a marshmallow dream and the very centre of the filling was a taste explosion... I'm salivating while writing this.

Needless to say we made another trip into town and bought twice as many macaroons this time round. We managed to save them until we got home and devoured them in bed while watching south park. Not exactly romantic, but my tastebuds were in love!

If you ever travel to Lyon, or France in general actually, get some macaroons, I'm sure they taste better there :)