Thanks to my little coffee date together with Lindsey I discovered the absolutely delicious cheesecake they serve at The Broken Arm. Oh, how I’ve missed a good cheesecake! I wish I could buy the whole cake and take it with me back home…

Strawberry “Céleste” tart from Pierre Hermé.

In the mood for a Saturday treat? Then I suggest heading over to Carette by Place des Vosges. I can recommend their tarte aux framboises, madeleine cookies and their macarons so far.

A couple of weeks ago I met up with the lovely Meg and Lauren for a little afternoon treat at Odette. As you probably know, I don’t mind a little cream puff every now and then and since I first heard about Odette through Meg’s post I had been wanting to go. I’m so happy I did because, to me, these little things are the best cream puffs I’ve had in Paris so far.

I recently got a very exciting (and sweet) little assignment from the HiP Paris Blog that required me gathering some friends and eating a bunch of delicious éclairs! Can’t get much better than that, right? I’m glad to finally be able to share the results from this wonderful day. My post about the two places, L’Éclair de Génie and L’Atelier de l’Éclair, is up on the HiP Paris Blog today, go check it out!

As I previously told you, I met up with Grace to do some research work at the café Le Loir dans la Théière the other week. I’ve been here a couple of times before but never had the opportunity to taste the desserts that I’ve heard so much about. Especially that famous (and absolutely humongous) lemon meringue tart! I love the homey, cosy feeling you get at this café and even though the lemon meringue tart wasn’t the best I’ve had in Paris so far, I would definitely come back for the atmosphere.

I know that the blog has been lacking with updates this weekend but I guess that’s the consequences of having an absolutely fantastic time with some of the loveliest people in the world. I hope you all have had a great Easter weekend!

Let’s start this week with some sweets! I’ve been wanting to try out the adorable café called Mamie Gâteaux for ages now and a couple of days ago I finally got the chance to do so, and I’m definitely coming back! It’s such a cosy and small place with delicious looking cakes lined up along the counter. You can choose between a yummy carrot cake, scones, a rich chocolate cake, the crumble you see above and many other desserts.

I think I’ve eaten my way around a lot of pastries and all kinds of sweets (see more here) during my time here in Paris. But I guess this one would have to be my favourite. Out of all the sweets I’ve eaten, this is the yummiest one! The caramel tart from Sadaharu Aoki. Gosh, that’s a heavy statement. But hopefully it can live up to your expectations. Bear in mind though: I do love my caramel. And if you’re not a (big) caramel fan I wouldn’t recommend bothering. Ever since I first tasted it about a year ago, I’ve always wanted to come back for more. And now that I have: yes, it’s just as good as I remembered it to be. Yum yum yum!

The lovely Milsters, from Little Pieces of Light, organises a macaron tasting competition each year under the name “Macaron Smackdown” and this year I had the pleasure to be invited. A day filled with a countless number of macarons and champagne — it can’t get much better than that, can it?

Together with a lovely group of people (Milsters, Yasmine, Toshi, Greg, Edna, Grace, Stephanie, Malin, and Vicky) we tasted around 20 macarons each to then decide on a winner of each flavour. The macaron houses competing this year were last year’s winner Carette and Pierre Hermé, Hugo & Victor, Sadaharu Aoki, and Jean-Paul Hévin (to avoid several questions: yes, Ladurée is missing. They came in last the year before and was therefor not competing this year). The flavours we tasted were: caramel au beurre salé, framboise, pistache, a specialty flavour with chocolate/nuts and a specialty flavour with fruit/flower. This year’s winner turned out to be Pierre Hermé with Carette as a close second, Hugo & Victor came in on a third place followed by Sadaharu Aoki and last came Jean Paul Hévin (which I didn’t like at all).

Macarons can really be a tricky thing! They both taste and are made so completely different that you really need to taste them all (well, if that’s possible) before you can choose your favourite ones. Just look how different they’re made. For example Hugo & Victor’s are more modest while the ones from Carette are bursting with colour and filling. And I think my favourite comment from the afternoon had to be Greg’s: “Carette macarons are like macarons on steroids!“. Oh yes they are.

My favourite macarons from the day were: the caramel au beurre salé from Sadaharu Aoki (the orange one in photo #3), the caramel au beurre salé and framboise from Hugo & Victor (seen in photo #5), the pistache from Carette and the passion fruit from Pierre Hermé (seen somewhere in photo #1).

For more photos, a waay better explanation and many many more details I think you should drop by Milsters’ post about this afternoon, thank you for being such a lovely host and letting us have an excuse to indulge in a small fortune worth of macarons!

Yesterday I celebrated macaron day together with my friend Malin who just arrived in Paris (and with some great amounts of tea as you probably can tell from the photos above). She had brought so many decoration details and so much tea with her from Sweden that it almost felt as though I was back in Stockholm for a short second! Later we wandered the streets of Paris together, exploring her new neighbourhood for the coming three months, and finally ended up at my favourite Les Cocottes for dinner.