Photos & Written by Elina of Sugar Symphony

It is somewhat fascinating how the same place can mean and be two almost completely different things just over a relatively short period of time.

PARIS. I suppose that for every person who has or has not been there, the city means something else – it can be romantic, fun, inspirational, fashion-filled, business-busy as well as a hundred other things. The first time I went there two years ago it was my first trip to the "old" Europe, thus being the diligent tourists that I and my friends were, it meant that we took on the task to try and see everything a tourist guide prescribes to see and we tried to do it in a week. It all came down to a week where in our youth optimism we left the holiday apartment at 9am and came home after mid-night for seven straight days in a row and during the day so as not to miss anything possibly worth seeing, we walked almost everywhere. This meant that by the time we went back home I felt as exhausted as I had never ever felt in life because we literally had walked a few hundreds of kilometers over the week.

I enjoyed every single minute of this trip, however at that time the magical world of baking had not yet been revealed to me. I still had no clue what a macaron or madeleine is. I had no idea who Pierre Herme or Lauduree are. So as it was very, very hot when we were there, we basically lived on ice-cream. That I can say tasted more than great and I had the chance to try flavors like fig and lavender.

Since that time I have tried my hand at baking macarons, tiramisu, maple mousse, crème brulee and have had numerous other experiments in the kitchen. I have found the magic that happens when one combines flour, eggs, a pinch of imagination and a handful of heart.

In addition, to baking I have a hobby of running marathons, thus when at the end of last year I was looking for an international marathon to run in the spring I immediately stopped searching when I run across the Paris marathon taking place in April. This time I promised myself that I would try as much as I could of the fabulous French pastry while in Paris. At one point I believe I prepared more for planning my pastry shop tasting trip than I did for the marathon.

After some extensive research on the Internet I had a list of the must-try pastries in Paris according to self proclaimed serious food addicts/specialists. I had the addresses, the images of how the dessert looks like and a rating as to which are the best. I believed I was prepared. I was wrong. When I arrived in Paris, met my friend and had done all the preparation for the marathon, we started searching for the pastry shops in the map. On my list there were – Pierre Herme, Hugo&Victor, Sadaharu Aoki, La Patisserie des Reves, Carl Marletti and Lauduree. After the initial search we found only two of the addresses, thus the rest I had to ask the receptionist to print us a smaller scaled map to find the shops. I chose to track down Pierre Herme as my first target. My list said that the shop had to be on rue de Vaugirard. Finding the street wasn’t that difficult but I believe that we found the longest street in Paris as we literally had to walk for 30 minutes to get from the beginning of the street to number 185. But all the walking was worth the moment I saw the sign “PH”. For a minute or two I was just standing there – looking around, trying to realize that I am finally here. I must admit that I was surprised as in my mind I had imagined the place to be bigger, with more people and a place where one can sit down and enjoy the masterpiece with a cup of tea or coffee but in reality the shop was quite tiny with only two other customers apart from me and my friend and everything had to be taken away. I opted for the Tarte Vanille Infiniment, few different macaron flavors and ispahan.

On our way back to the hotel we also had the shop of Sadaharu Aoki. Surprise, surprise – this place was even more compact that the previous shop. However, I loved the feel in there as the two sales-women were talking to each other in Japanese (as I had spent a year in Japan while in high-school, it was very heartwarming to hear Japanese again…) and when looking at the desserts I had the feeling that every smallest piece is made with great thought and care. Here we chose the Tarte au Caramel Beurre Sale. Here our patience had ended as we were hungry not having had any breakfast yet and it was already past mid-day and we were dying to try all our newly acquired treasures, thus we headed back to the hotel stopping on our way to pick up some nice cup of coffee to go with all the pastries.

When back in the hotel although neither of us have ever been exquisite food tasters we thought that this occasion requested for us to try the best we could. So we sat down by the small table, took all the sugared treasures out of their boxes, arranged them on tissues, then separated a tiny piece with our oh-so-superb plastic forks, put the piece in the mouth, waited a moment before making a very serious facial expression and starting a debate as to what the secret ingredients to excellence were. It did require a lot of self discipline considering how hungry we were but it was fun and for a moment we truly felt like experts. Everything tasted great however in contrary to the Internet top-pastries, my favorite since that moment was the Ispahan from Pierre Herme and no other pastry we tried afterwards could beat the perfection that I thought was entrapped in a piece of Ispahan.

Over the remaining days we tracked down Hugo&Victor – and this was no easy task as the shop was located quite outside the centre of the city, on a small street with no other shops surrounding it. We tried the Hugo Chocolate that according to the Internet top was supposed to be nr.1 as well as I bought some chocolates to bring home as they were packed in box that resembled a book. I cannot say that the chocolate cake was not tasty but I suppose that this proved that I am not a true chocoholic and would choose a macaron any time of the day.

Last but not least we tried some macarons made by Lauduree. These I also took home for my parents to try (I must admit that I did this more to have a reason to buy the nice looking box). Back home after a rating contest we agreed that the apple one tasted the best.

Overall this was a great experience and I am glad I had the marathon as this meant that all the sugar eating did not leave too disastrous effects. Now at the beginning of June when I am sitting in the living room at my home writing this article, looking at a vase with jasmines that fill the air and one can feel a thunderstorm approaching, I remember these days and I know that this is a memory that will stay with me for a very long time. It is a great feeling to finally see that a macaron comes out of the oven with fabulous feet and lovely color but it is an even better feeling when I have had the chance to try the real thing. From one point of view it makes me feel happy as I realize that I am able to recreate at least a part of the excellence a true master chef is doing while at the same time it shows me how much talent, work and heart has to go into their work to produce something like the most famous French pastries.