An Elegant Afternoon of Eating Cookies

I told you all about last week's Macaron Day and you're ever so thankful about that notice right? Either that or you're slapping yourself now for not participating and missing out on all the goodness. Well here's a recap of my experience.

I'm fortunate to work in a neighborhood surrounded by participating macaron bakeries so at lunch I went with a couple coworkers on a mini-macaron scavenger hunt. After lunch in the Plaza Food Hall (yay Luke's Lobster!), our first stop was FP Patisserie. There I chose the chocolate and nibs macaron, which I found delightful. The chocolate flavor wasn't too overpowering, and the macaron's texture was perfect (read: the cookies themselves were hollow like they're supposed to be).

Chocolate and nibs macaron from FP Patisserie

Gift boxes

Macaron display

Our next stop was Macaron Cafe on 59th Street and they win the award for the most amount of flavors and colors (some are even sparkly!). I decided on classic pistachio, though I was tempted by the lavender vanilla and nutella cookies. These macarons were a bit denser but full-flavored and a good all-around cookie.

Macarons at Macaron Cafe

Pistachio Macaron

Lastly we stopped in the china store Bernardaud for MadMac macarons. Their display was very elegant and they were sampling 4 flavors. I chose raspberry and my coworkers and I decided that MadMac wins the award for best macaron of the day. We even met the chef Florian Bellanger, from Cupcake Wars!

MadMac Macarons

My raspberry macaron

This is always a great event and I particularly loved the charitable aspect. A percentage of every purchase at participating bakeries went to one of NYC's greatest charities -- CityHarvest. I hope they were able to feed a lot of people based on New Yorkers' love for macarons!