Macarons from Tokyo...

I managed to get my hands on Pierre Herme's macarons! Surreal or not. I mean, a few years ago, I would have been all "Pierre Herme" who? But now that I'm slowly morphing into (gasp) a macaron addict, I would have been mad not to have heard of Pierre Herme. Macarons in Tokyo are (gasp again) freakin' madly priced. Then again, it could have been all patisseries in general? These macs cost like S$5 a pop. Almost two and a half times more than the most expensive macs in town...

Precious tokens

The Sis's boyfriend tote back three macs from Pierre Herme and a box of half dozen from another patisserie, Sebastian Bouillet. The three from Pierre Herme are Rose, Jasmin and (unidentified) Raspberry/Vanilla? I peered at the macaron pamphlet that came along with the purchase, but I couldn't match the colours of the macaron to the pictures. Initially I thought that it was the Montebello, then I realise the Montebello colours were green and fuchsia, not cream and fuchsia. Bah.

I wanted more exotic flavours like the Marron matcha (chestnut green tea), Mogador (choc passionfruit), Americano Pamplemousse (grapefruit) or the Truffle Noisette (white truffle hazelnut), alas the Sis boyfriend said that the Tokyo outlet had very limited flavours. So he picked the above three flavours out of the ones available.

I must say I liked the Rose one the best. The creamy rose buttercream was tasty without being greasy. The Jasmin was average, the taste wasn't very noticeable and the filling reminded me of mooncake filling texture (sticky lotus paste). Haha. The raspberry/vanilla (aka unknown) was the worst out of the lot. The innards were super soggy. I hate. It bypassed the chewy stage totally, could it be also due to the transportation time the macs went through before reaching Singapore? But the other two macs were fine! Hmmm. Weird.

Pretty pink/purple packaging 

Top to Bottom (L:R)  - Chocolat; Caramel Passion; Rose Litchi Framboise; Poivron Framboise; Jasmin Mangue; Carotte Orange

Chocolat: THE BEST out of the box. The filling for this was a very dark,rich and thick layer of ganache. It made chewing on the mac similiar to munching on a brownie morsel. Yums.

Caramel Passion: The caramel was too sweet. The combination of salty, sour and sweet was a bit weird, so I didn't like this macaron very much.

Rose Litchi Framboise: The rose smell was obvious, and the bright pink sugar crystals adorning the shell made it look very girly. I've never seen macaron shells rolled in sugar before, and out of the six Sebastian Bouillet macarons, two were sugar-fied (the other being Jasmin Mangue). The raspberry gelee inside had a nice flavour to complement the rose. No litchi taste whatsoever.

Poivron Framboise: The layer of raspberry gelee was thicker for this macaron, and it tasted almost raspberry jam-ish in fact.

Jasmin Mangue: The mango taste rules for this macaron. The filling texture was sticky and jelly-ish, and it tasted really like dried mango. The mango overpowered any trace of jasmin (if there even was a trace...).

Carotte Orange: Eww. Worst. No distinct taste, and my Sis said she can't taste anything too. The whole thing was a soggy mess. Poots.

Haha, for all the macs, we split each mac into thirds to share. The job of dividing the macs most of the time fell upon me since I can divide the macs into roughly equal portions. It's good that there's a couple of us sharing the macs, cos we won't feel so full after sampling all those sweets. Not that we ate them all at one shot of course. We split them up and ate them on three seperate occasions. Hoho.

I can't wait to go Tokyo/Paris to savour all the lovely desserts. Then again, I'd probably like gain so much weight if I do so. Maybe not then. Haha.