Pastry chefs always recommend keeping your just-bought macarons cool on your way home. They’ve never said anything, though, about defrosting them once you pop them out of the freezer.
Enter Pastry Chef Joe. Trader Joe.
On a recent trip to the trendy chain grocery store in Kansas City, I spotted a box of French macarons in the frozen sweets aisle and couldn’t resist them. At $4.99 for a dozen (that’s about 42 cents a piece for six chocolate and six vanilla macarons!), I figured it’d be worth a try to taste-test them at home with the help of the teacher man.
{Trader Joe's macarons, along with other frozen delights, caught my eye at the trendy grocery store.}
When I opened my box, I noticed a few cracked macarons — no good! Luckily the other 10 looked just fine. They had the delicate footing around the cream filling and the seemingly right texture on top and bottom.
{Trader Joe's macarons come in simple flavors: chocolate and vanilla.}
Unfortunately, upon biting into them, they lacked the nice, crackly shell. The macarons were a bit too chewy, but the creamy filling did make up for the lack of a crispy top. I preferred the chocolate to the vanilla; the filling was more flavorful, though nothing extraordinary.
So, would I shell out $4.99 for another dozen of Trader Joe’s macarons, or instead pay $1.95 for a couple from Natasha’s Mulberry & Mott in Leawood? Probably the latter. While Trader Joe’s frozen macarons were fine, you just can’t beat fresh-made, local macarons with a crisp shell and soft center.
