Macarons: an addiction

The French macaron is the jewel in the beret of pâtisserie française. Wander past any bakery and they're there glittering up at you, row upon row of tiny almond biscuits of every imaginable colour and flavour; hot fuschia against acid green, delicate violet beside deep chocolate. Pistache, cassis, rose, orange-flower, praline, vanilla, lavender, passionfruit, marrons glacés, jasmine, lemon, coffee, lily of the valley, licquorice...

A macaron is a chic Parisian woman in edible form. Dainty, frilly, seductive but with a hard outer shell. Expensive. And very often completely unattainable, which is why very few people make them at home. The best place to buy them is probably Ladurée, which has several elegant salons du thé dotted around Paris, and a far less elegant, clunkier caff on the ground floor of Harrods which still charges a good £15 for eggs Benedict but comes without an essential garnish of "je ne sais quoi." Give the chi-chi tea room with its crappy (and very French) service a miss in London, but if you're feeling frivolous do go for a pick'n'mix box of beautiful macarons. They make sublime gifts (a man coming home with a box of these is guaranteed some serious oh la la-action), and the sumptuous eau de nil and rose boxes look more like they contain frothy French knickers than petit fours.

However, if you are inclined towards a spot of baking or fancy trying something new, macarons can be made at home fairly easily, meaning that you can turn out these stunning jewels in any flavour and colour, at any time, for any occasion. And believe me, you will. Macaron-making can turn into something of an obsession.

When I finally cracked the recipe, I was hooked good and proper, turning out batch after batch every week in order to get my fix. I bought industrial-size bags of ground almonds and icing sugar and turned the kitchen into my very own mac-den; with baking trays and piping bags and silicone paper strewn across every surface. I got my rocks off to rosewater, my kicks out of food colouring, cheap thrills from chocolate ganache. I became the Mad Hatter of macaroons. Nights were filled with kaleidoscope reveries of rainbow colours and sugar trips. I would awake in the night delirious, raving wildly about peanut butter and lavender sugar. Relatives and friends started to worry; there were talks of an intervention. Something had to give.

A year on, and I've learnt to put things into perspective. I now usually make macarons only once a week, maybe twice. One has to think of priorities. But occasionally, just sometimes, when I wander unwittingly past a particularly gleaming pâtisserie window, I can't help but stop and press my nose to the glass, fixed like Golum to the ring. It's best to take it one day at a time.

This is the easiest recipe you'll find, with no sugar thermometers, powdered egg white or tears in sight. You are guaranteed perfect macarons if you follow it correctly; as usual, pastry recipes are pretty precise. It is taken from Ottolenghi's book, which is hugely worth seeking out in itself.

Try them just once and you'll understand.

Basic method:

120g icing sugar

60g ground almonds

60g egg whites (usually 2 large free-range egg whites)

40g caster sugar

Set the oven to 160C. Cover two flat baking trays with baking (non-stick) paper. Prepare a piping bag with a 1cm nozzle.

In a food processor, whizz up the almonds and icing sugar, then sieve them together into a bowl so you have a fine powder.

In another, GREASE-FREE bowl, beat the egg whites with electric beaters until foamy, then add the caster sugar a bit at a time until you have a stiff, but not too dry, meringue.

Take a third of the meringue and, with a metal spoon, fold it into the almond mixture, quickly and as lightly as possible. Repeat with the other two thirds, making sure not to knock the air out of the mixture - quick, light folding - it's all in the wrist. Want you want to end up with is a molten lava consistency (what else indeed?), so that when you part the mixture with your spoon it flows back together in a couple of seconds.

Spoon into the piping bag and pipe small discs of about 3cmc, each a few cms apart from each other, by keeping the nozzle still and squeezing the bag so that a small circle forms. Whe you have done a sheet, pick up the tray and tap the base quite hard against the work surface to pop any air bubbles. Leave to rest for 15 minutes, then bake for about 6-8 minutes. What you should end up with is disks witha domed surface, a little frill ("feet") around the base and a flat bottom, as below.

These ones - chocolate - had 12g of cocoa powder added to the almond mixture (take away 10g of ground almonds to compensate), made just the same way. As far as how they should look, these ones are the Holy Grail. Chocolate are usually more popular than any others too. In the same way, you can flavour the dry mix with anything you like - a bit of cinnamon, coffee powder, ground cardamom, lime or lemon zest.....just nothing wet. If you wanted to use something like rosewater or orange-flower water, or a flavoured syrup, to flavour the macs, add it to the meringue before incorporating, with any food colouring. Just as little extra liquid as possible!

Where flavours are concerned, though, go wild.

Sandwich them together with buttercream or a chocolate ganache (cream and chocolate). Eat them and weep.

Chocolate, peach and lavender: