I’m back home from Paris - until I’m lucky enough to be able to make a return trip, at least - and I miss it already. The city was fantastic, the people were lovely and the food was delicious. Even though it was tempting to do so, I didn’t take the time this trip to plan out where the “best” or most famous patisseries and boulangeries were, and opted to just explore the neighborhoods that I stayed in myself. It ended up working out beautifully and I got to eat some outstanding baguettes and pastries from award-winning bakeries. I’d do the same thing all over again and hope to have just as much luck finding top-quality food. That said, since I’m more familiar with the city, I might also try to plan one or two well-known shops, like Pierre Herme, into my itinerary.

Here are a last few photos of Paris pastry - Chocolate and Pistachio Flan, above, Macarons and a full window display, below - and a roundup of the Paris posts I’ve put up over the course of the trip:

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French macarons are thin, chewy, meringue cookies that are sandwiched together with some kind of filling. The cookies should be light and chewy, with a very thin, crisp “crust” that gives way as soon as you bite down into it. The meringue has a lot of ground nuts - usually almonds - incorporated into it, which contributes a nice nutty taste and adds to the chewy finished texture by giving the cookies some substance. They’re very elegant to look at and are available at many, many bakeries in France. Here in the US, they’re a lot less common, but they’re relatively easy to make at home, although they are slightly more involved than baking up a regular batch of chocolate chip cookies.

These are Nutella Macarons, made with ground hazelnuts and cocoa powder in the meringue cookie and smeared with a little bit of Nutella to sandwich them together. The cookies themselves have good chocolate flavor and a nice nuttiness to them. The recipe seems to call for a lot of sugar, but the cookies aren’t actually all that sweet on their own. Nutella is a great filling for these because it highlights the chocolate and hazelnut, and requires no prep work (it goes straight from the jar into the cookie). The cookies only need a thin layer of Nutella to hold them together; you could pile it on like an Oreo filling if you really want too, but the cookies taste and store better if you keep it pretty thin.

The cookies are made by folding a meringue into a dough of ground nuts, cocoa powder and egg whites, creating a lightweight batter with a lot of flavor. The cookie batter must be piped onto baking sheets to ensure that you get cookies of uniform size and shape. Piping is also much faster and much cleaner than trying to hand-drop this batter. Once the cookies are piped out, they must sit at room temperature for a few minutes to form a slight “skin” that gives them their classically smooth look. The cookies are then baked, cooled and filled. The cookies are best within 2-3 days of baking and keep well when stored in an airtight container.

You can either buy whole hazelnuts and grind them yourself in the food processor, or look for hazelnut meal in a specialty store (Whole Foods, for instance, sometimes carries it). It is not necessary to skin the nuts before processing them if you start with whole hazelnuts, as you will not be able to see the brown flecks from the hazelnut skin in the chocolate cookies. If you can’t find hazelnuts, you can easily use ground almonds in this recipe, but the finished cookie will have a slight almond flavor to it in addition to the flavors of chocolate and Nutella.

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In France, bakeries usually have signs in the windows that prominently say “Boulangerie” and “Patisserie.” A boulangerie is a bakery that specializes in breads. A patisserie is a bakery that specializes in pastries. The majority do both and offer a wide selection of both sweets and baguettes and other breads. Some bakeries also display a sign that says “vienoisserie,” usually without much explanation. Vienoisserie means Vienna-style baked goods, but includes many things that are very typically French. They are pastries made with doughs that are “dry” and rich in butter, and would include a pastry made with brioche dough, as opposed to a cake-type pastry that begins with a very wet batter. Vienoisserie also includes pastries that are made with with yeasted, laminated dough that alternates layers of flour/pastry dough and butter. These pastries include things like croissants, Danishes, pain au chocolate (both often made with croissant dough).

Vienoisseries are usually eaten as breakfast or as a snack and not as a dessert because they are not too sweet. Even treats like pain au chocolate and brioche au sucre are not sweetened, despite their respective additions of chocolate and sugar. The main flavor of pastries like this is butter, and they are generally known for the lightness of the pastry, whether you are dealing with a flaky croissant or a soft brioche bun.

It is worth noting, as commenter Susan Betz mentioned to me, that a similar term is also used in the US and Canada. She said, “As an interesting contrast, in both the US and Canada, the term Viennese Buffet is sometimes used for a selection of desserts. It is frequently, though not exclusively, of individual servings as opposed to slices of a larger baked item. I have been to a wedding in Toronto that ended with this and have seen it offered at major hotels here in the states. It is akin to what a more casual restaurant would call a dessert bar.”

After my recent trip to Paris, followed by a trip to Trader Joe’s to restock my pantry, I had a little realization about Trader Joe’s Canneles de Bordeaux. I reviewed these specialty french pastries a few months ago, when Trader Joe’s launched a pre-baked frozen version. They were ok, but not nearly as good as a fresh cannele. Ideally, a cannele should have a slightly crisp crust and a very custardy center. What I realized is that even though they weren’t quite as good as a fresh-from-the-oven cannele, they were a lot better than some of the heavy, bread-like canneles I tasted in France. This inspired me to pick up a box of Trader Joe’s newest offering - Chocolate Canneles de Bordeaux - and give them a try.

Like the regular canneles, these chocolate canneles are best eaten after being defrosted and reheated in the oven for 15-20 minutes at 350F. When made this way, they come out with a slightly crisp, yet slightly tough, crust and a moist, soft interior. They remind me of a not-too-sweet molten center chocolate cake, since the center seemed to be more like a half-baked brownie than a custard. That said, they were pretty good and definitely unusual. My preference is still for the classic, where you can get the notes of vanilla, caramel and eggy custard in each bite, but the dark cocoa flavor (these are so dark in color, they’re almost black) makes these a good choice for chocolate fans who prefer dark chocolate.

The Eiffel Tower is one of the most recognizable monuments in the world and a must-see for most visitors to Paris. The average day for a visitor will include a wait for either the elevator or the stairs to get up to the viewing levels, some time taking photographs and enjoying the Paris skyline, and a wait back at the elevator to get down. Or, you can make the most of your trip to the 1,063-ft high steel tower (324m or approx. 81 stories) and have a leisurely lunch or dinner there.

There are two restaurants in the Eiffel Tower, the Michelin-starred Jules Verne on the 2nd platform and 58 Tour Eiffel on the 1st platform. The Jules Verne is very pricey, as you might imagine, but offers high quality French food with an unforgettable view. 58 Tour Eiffel on the 1st platform is more reasonably priced, with prix fixe options and a la carte options for lunch and dinner. You don’t need reservations for lunch, and snagging a seat at the restaurant allows you to skip the line  at the bottom of the tower and hop right into the elevator.

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I am flush with strawberries right now. It’s still relatively early in strawberry season, which generally runs from late spring through summer, but the berries I’ve picked up this week have all been sweet and full of flavor. The only problem with having so many strawberries around is that they start to go bad rather quickly, so I try to use them up by adding them to cereal, yogurt and pancakes for breakfast, making smoothies and loading them into desserts. One of my favorites is strawberry shortcake, a dessert that is always easy to put together and a great way to showcase fresh, ripe berries.

I like to think of these as fancy strawberry shortcakes. They’re cream puffs that are filled with a fluffy mascarpone cream and chopped, fresh strawberries. The choux pastry that makes the cream puffs is lightweight and soft, so these are much lighter and less filling than regular shortcakes. Each one is about 3 bites of creamy, strawberry goodness.

These cream puffs look very elegant but are relatively easy to make. The filling can be made in advance and chilled in the refrigerator. The puffs are best the same day that they are made, but are still very good the next day if they’re cooled completely and stored in an airtight container. The filling should only be added to the puffs right before serving. I like to leave the strawberries in medium-sized chunks to get a lot of flavor, but this also means that I usually have to cut open the cream puffs and add the filling with a knife or a spoon. If you want to pipe it into the puffs and don’t want berries stuck in a pastry bag, chop them up finely.
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