Macarons are always fun to make, almost as much fun as they are to eat them. The texture of a great macaron shell is delicately crisp on the outside, and soft and almost gooey on the inside, and the delicate flavor of almonds is hard to resist. Besides, everyone knows they are not easy to make and they’re a real crowd-pleaser.

For the month of October we got to take on one of many bakers’ deepest, darkest kitchen nightmares : macarons. Our talented bakers Korena from Korena in the Kitchen and Rachael from pizzarossa made the intimidating task of mastering these French beauties a breeze.

For this batch, I used Trader Joe’s almond flour (which explains the speckled appearance of the shells), just a bit of red dye (giving it a pinkish color), and dulce de leche as the filling. As always, I used the Italian (cooked sugar) meringue method, as it’s almost failsafe. And, as always, they were absolutely delectable.