Parisian pastries? Oui, S'il vous plait!

I've been eyeing these beauties for awhile, and have decided that I need to try them. As soon as I saw their bright colors and simple ingredients, I was intrigued.

These french pastries, or macarons, sound a little too close to the Jewish macarOOn for comfort. I found myself picturing the dense coconut cookies of my childhood and cringing. However, these french desserts, as I found out, are far closer to a meringue than any macaroons that I have tasted.

Macarons are French or Italian pastries that consist of two meringue cookies with filling in the middle. Now I had read that, even though these desserts require few ingredients, they can be very "finicky," so needless to say, I was worried.

I decided to attempt two different colors and two different flavors. Upon choosing both, I realized that it might have made more sense to have the colors correspond with the flavors (blue=blueberry, not raspberry as mine would be), but you know what they say about hindsight. So I continued with my soon to be "blue raspberry" (because we all know blue raspberries don't really exist anyway) macarons and green lime flavored macarons.

I would like to say that I completed the recipe without any mishaps, but anyone who has ever watched me bake knows that that is not possible. After cleaning up the half of the recipe that ended up on the floor and adding more to the mix (it's not my fault that it came out of the bowl really fast), I piped the mix onto the baking sheets.

The recipe said to bake the macarons with the oven door "slightly ajar." Okay, my door does all the way open and all the way shut. So after allowing my dad to convince me that it was okay to prop the oven door open with a glass cup, I let them bake.

And here they are!

And now, a quick note about the filling. As I said, I wanted to do two different fillings for the macarons. The filling you see here:..is a mascarpone raspberry filling. Now, it is not for the faint of palate! If you are a fan of mascarpone, you will enjoy this, but it has a very distinctive taste.

For these macarons, I couldn't find a lime recipe, so I decided to make up my own. These are filled with a mascarpone/ lime filling. Needless to say, it worked out perfectly (not really). However, they ended up tasting alright. If I were to try them again, I might make a marshmallow or cream cheese filling instead.

Enjoy!

Coming soon... edward vs. jacob CAKE BALLS for the midnight premiere of ECLIPSE!!