Weekend in NYC - April 24-27

So back in April, I spent a weekend in New York City with my Aunt and Uncle, and my cousins. They were wonderfully accommodating, especially since I wanted to go into every bakery we passed on our wanderings. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a huge thing for French food, ever since I went to France my junior year of high school, and one of my favorites is the French macaron, a delightful sandwich cookie that comes in unimaginable variations.

Sunset at the Tribeca Film Festival

Well, my persistence paid off! We made it to Kee's Chocolates, a wonderfully charming little shop in SoHo. On the website, it says that Kee Ling Tong left her corporate job to pursue her dream of opening a shop selling flowers and chocolates. I am eminently glad she did so! Her macarons are delicious circles of heaven, with a truly delectable chocolate ganache as a filling. I'm a fan of dark chocolate ganaches in macarons, as I feel it cuts the sweetness of the almond and sugar used to create the shell.



Another thing I'm a fan of?

Kee's gorgeous boxes! I kept mine to store jewelry in, because I just can't bear to throw it away.


The ones pictured here are, left to right, cassis, what was supposed to be key lime (more on that later), raspberry, passion fruit, ginger and peach, pineapple and papaya, kaffir lime, and sour sap. I picked up a blood orange with green tea macaron as well, but that didn't live long enough for me to grab a photo. (It was, however, delicious!)

My favorite was definitely the cassis. The tartness of the cassis melded nicely with the sweetness of the shell and chocolate.

All in all, Kee's had some of the more interesting flavors I have ever seen, besides those of Pierre Herme, of course.
(Can anyone beat Ketchup and cornichon for a wierd cookie flavor?)

Oh, and about that key lime situation...
The girl in the shop said it was key lime, but when I tasted it, it tasted much more of jasmine and tea than anything else, and I'm pretty sure the flavors got mixed up. It definitely did not taste like lime, which disappointed me, since I was excited to see how well Kee's would capture the fruity floral taste of the Key lime.

Having never tried Sour Sap fruit, I was intrigued by the cookie, but I'm not sure I like it. It was slightly banana-esque, and I'm not a fan of bananas. Banana bread, on the other hand....

My haul for the day.


We also stopped at another bakery, however I cannot on my life remember the name. They had much smaller macarons, but they were no less tasty. Since I was there, I also picked up a bag of their madeleines, which are another favorite of mine.

See that second bag of macarons in the middle? The girl packing my macarons dropped the bag, and, being as fragile as they are, they shattered, which means I got an extra lemon, apricot and chocolate macaron for free! Turn down free food, me? Never.

As far as I could tell, the flavors included were lemon, pistachio, chocolate, raspberry, coffee and sesame.

Unfortunately, they didn't survive the trip nearly as well as my nicely boxed ones from Kee's.
I particularly liked the sesame iteration. It is delightfully nutty, with a sweet but not overpowering buttercream in the middle. The apricot version was also delicious, sweet, but not cloyingly so. It has apricot preserves in the middle, which are pleasantly tart and provide a great counterpoint to the shell.

The others were fairly standard. I mean, there's only so many ways to improve upon chocolate ganache. The lemon, however, was disappointingly sweet. It tasted like Trix cereal, which is really not the taste one goes for in a cookie of this caliber. I have made lemon macarons before, and I know it's difficult for the lemon to really break through the sometimes cloying sweetness of the almond and sugar.

And that was just one day of my epic New York adventure!
Oh, and a piece of advice for would-be macaron hunters?

Bring a box!

The macs I bought in the bag ended up very sad and squished by the time I made it back to Rochester Monday afternoon.