Macaron meets cupcake...
After someone tweeted about cupcakes at La Duree, Paris's iconic macaron bakery, I was curious. Could the cupcake, the "new macaron" of Paris really have infiltrated a bakery like La Duree? I was skeptical, so I headed down to check it out at their Saint Germain location. Sure enough, there they were. "Cup Cakes." Orange chocolate. Rose raspberry. Lemon meringue. Violet. Pistachio cassis (if I remember correctly). OK flavor combos, I suppose. But at 5.50 euros each, were they worth it?
I tried one with my co-taster, and we dropped the enormous (like, seven bucks!) sum on an orange chocolate cake for research purposes. While the chocolate cake was moist and rich, the orange marmalade, deliciously bitter, fell right out of the bottom of the cake. And the icing, well, don't get me started. How hard is it to make a good butter cream?
The overall experience was enticing. Taking the box out of the bag, then the cupcake out of the box, then the wrapper off the cup, then trying to take the cup off the cake -- it was an exercise. But to have the entire cake fall apart after the first bite, well, it was a bit depressing. Was the effort worth it? It wasn't horrible, but let's just say that La Duree should stick to macarons...
I tried one with my co-taster, and we dropped the enormous (like, seven bucks!) sum on an orange chocolate cake for research purposes. While the chocolate cake was moist and rich, the orange marmalade, deliciously bitter, fell right out of the bottom of the cake. And the icing, well, don't get me started. How hard is it to make a good butter cream?
The overall experience was enticing. Taking the box out of the bag, then the cupcake out of the box, then the wrapper off the cup, then trying to take the cup off the cake -- it was an exercise. But to have the entire cake fall apart after the first bite, well, it was a bit depressing. Was the effort worth it? It wasn't horrible, but let's just say that La Duree should stick to macarons...