Product reviews: BOX OF SIX MACARONS (Ladurée) and POSH PROFITEROLES (Marks and Spencer)

"Not really your kind of place, is it?"

Five years ago, my best friend Anna (the girl whom this blog is named after) and I went to Ladurée, as a girl from University would not stop banging on about their macarons, and we wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Given the Scorsese film script-levels of salty language used in my 2012 review, I think it’s fair to say I was not enamoured with the place. Anna and I have a history for giving each other birthday presents loaded with inside jokes, so for my birthday this year she got me a proper gift (a heart-shaped compact mirror with the letter E on the front, a very practical gift given my inclination to be a tad vain), and a FOR THE LULZ joke, which was a box of six macarons from that dastard place itself, Ladurée.

The macarons didn’t quite reach the terrible experience of dining at Ladurée (although that would take some doing), but they also don’t have anything extra that elevate them beyond the standard Sainsbury’s macaron.

Now believe me, I can appreciate a good macaron; the one I had with my dessert at Bacco is wonderful and still visits me in my dreams (just like how Cara Delevingne's performance in Suicide Squad frequents my nightmares). But it seems a bit of a liberty to swindle customers for £2 a macaron when the Sainsbury’s box of six is only £3 altogether. 

For the price they were charging per macaron, the workmanship behind the individual confections really weren't anything special. For example, check out the third macaron from the bottom. It's been saturated in sugar in a really cheap, lazy manner, and the end product is a dessert that would be enough to give me diabetes. C'est affreux. 

Grade: E

The Marks and Spencer profiteroles, on the other hand, were a joy. The chocolate at the top contained just the hint of salt, which bought the flavour out nicely. Contrast these to the salted caramel macarons, which tasted like each macaron contained a sachet full of salt. Bit much.

Something else I loved about the chocolate topping was how rich it was, and the pastry was deliciously soft. The icing on the cake were the smatterings of white chocolate, which gave the tasty snack even more dimension. With this product, you could definitely taste the difference, and in this case, I was more than happy to pay more than I was usually used to for the dessert.

My only complaint was that there were so few.

Grade: A

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All my product reviews are here. To place a sponsored post, email me at lemon_and_lime7@hotmail.com.