Taste & See

What started as a challenge turned into a thriving business for Shelby Morrison as her flavorful, delicate macarons find their way onto tables throughout the county.

BY TERI R. WILLIAMS PHOTOS BY RUTH ENGLISH

American cuisine is as diverse as the countries from which our ancestors originated. Even so, it’s doubtful hotdogs bring to mind German ancestors or doughnuts Dutch forebears. But whenever we see a macaron, we think French. Ironically, the word macaron is Italian, and for good reasons. The origin of the delicate cookie, much like the recipe itself, is complicated. It’s not the kind of dessert you could whip up on a whim. Shelby Morrison might never have tried her hand at macarons had it not been for Hadley Williams, who was eight years old at the time. When Shelby’s friend Candace shared that her young daughter had successfully baked a batch of macarons, Shelby took it as a challenge.

She enjoyed trying new recipes. Her idea of fun was an afternoon rolling out thin layers of dough for a pan of baklava. Shelby would need all that experience as she set out to make her first batch of macarons. Everything to do with macarons was specific down to the most minute detail. Mixing, folding, whipping to a certain point, drying, resting, weighing ingredients to the gram. Overbaking or underbaking meant starting over from scratch. By her second attempt, Shelby’s macarons were a success. Such a success, in fact, that in the weeks surrounding Valentine’s Day (2022) she baked and sold over a thousand macarons.

As a child, Shelby had always enjoyed baking. Whenever there was a school event, she always volunteered to make desserts. However, it was not a culinary school that she would attend after graduating from Vidalia High School in 2014. “It was natural for me to lean toward the medical field,” said Shelby. Her mother, Jeanie Allen, is a nurse practitioner at Cardiology Associates of Vidalia. Her sister, Chelsea Powell, is also a primary care nurse practitioner.

That is not to suggest Shelby had followed the wrong career path. As a Registered Nurse (RN), she values the opportunity to serve people in need of medical care. After graduating from Southeastern Technical College’s nursing program in 2017, she received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from South Georgia State College in 2019. Following her graduation, Shelby worked at Meadows Regional Medical Center in the Progressive Care Unit (PCU) for a year and a half followed by two years at Meadows Advanced Wound Care. In 2021, she took a PRN position in surgery at Memorial Health Meadows Hospital (formerly Meadows Regional) and worked the COVID-19 overflow Unit during the 2021 Delta surge. Shelby currently works in surgery and PCU when needed. (Thankfully, there is no “COVID-19 overflow” at this time).

While eating lunch at Tappas Restaurant in Vidalia one afternoon, Shelby mentioned her success with the macarons to her friend, Eneas Salati, who is also one of the restaurant’s owners. “They made and sold macarons from time to time,” said Shelby, “but because of the expertise and time required, they didn’t make them often. He said, ‘Why don’t you bring some up here, and we’ll see how they do?” That first week, Tappas sold eighty macarons. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Speaking of history, the origin of the sweet dessert is as complicated as the recipe. The puffy almond/ meringue delicacy we call a macaron did indeed originate in France. More specifically, the Ladurée Bakery in Paris, which was opened in 1862 by Louis Ernest Ladurée. His grandson, Pierre Desfontaines, first put two macarons together and filled the middle with a “delicious ganache.”*

The Ladurée Bakery chronicles the evolution of the macaron through the findings of food and kitchen historian Dominique Michelle. “She finds its origins in Arabic countries, where the earliest records for the base of Macarons, almond paste, and sugar, was shown there because the almond tree is native to the Middle East” (ladorure.com/history-of-macarons).

Of course. That would explain why Aaron’s rod budded with almonds to denote which tribe God had chosen to serve as His priests. (Ref. Numbers 17) The shepherd’s rod would have been made from the native almond tree. Of course, a limb cut from an almond tree and made into a rod suddenly budding and producing almonds overnight is less explainable.

The historian from the Ladurée website found that “almond paste and sugar, in the form of marzipan, the raw base of any Macaron,” made its way from these Mediterranean lands into Europe. By the 8th century, macarons were already popular in Venetian monasteries, which explains why “macaron” is from the Italian word “maccarone.” Home to Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Of course, the macaron originated in Italy.

So, how did an Italian cookie become a 16th century dessert for French nobility? That credit goes to the Italian noblewoman Catherine d’ Medici. In an arranged marriage by her uncle, Pope Clement VII, she became queen consort at the age of fourteen to the French prince who would later become Henry II. There are countless stories surrounding the life of Catherine d’ Medici, which have given writers and producers plenty of dark material with which to work. Notwithstanding Catherine’s notorious hand in the religious persecution and political upheaval of the time, we can still appreciate the Italian macarons brought to the tables of France by her Italian chefs.

The chef and cooks were not the only Italians familiar with the macaron recipe who accompanied Catherine d’ Medici to France. As previously stated, macarons had been made in monasteries in Italy since the 8th century. So, it’s no surprise that the next time the almond cookie debuts, two nuns are at the center of the story. In 1793, the monastery where Marguirete Suzanne Gaillot and Elizabeth Morlot served had to close its doors. The nuns found refuge with a doctor in the city of Nancé. They survived the times by baking and selling macarons. The macarons made by the nuns were also called “priests’ bellybuttons.” Some have speculated that the nickname had something to do with the almond cookie’s lumpy shape. But we’ll leave it at that. Today, the “Macaron Sisters,” as they are remembered, are honored in Nancé with the street where they baked the sweets bearing their name.

About seventy years later, we arrive at the opening of the Ladurée Bakery in Paris in 1862. But, of course, you already know the rest of the story. The macaron is celebrated each year in Paris and other international cities, including New York City, on a specified day in March. In Paris, patrons can receive a free macaron with their order in participating bakeries, and a portion of profits made that day are given to a chosen charity.

But before you put it on the calendar and plan a celebration, there’s something you should know. Macaron and macaroon are two different cookies. It all has to do with the extra “o” that turns the macar“awn” into a macar“oon.” The base of both is meringue. But that’s where the similarity ends. Although Ladurée is credited with the sweetfilled double-decker French macaron, there’s no famous bakery or street named after nuns to give credit for switching out the almond flour with shredded coconut and drizzling a little chocolate on top. One “o” makes all the difference.

For Shelby, the one “o” cookie called a macaron continues to open doors of opportunity. Some doors are only opened with persistent knocking. And there’s nothing quite like persistence for building all the enduring stuff you need throughout life. Those are the experiences that teach us that we must never surrender our hope. The reward of perseverance is the joy discovered in divine opportunities. These doors don’t open because we kept knocking, but as a result of faithfulness with what we have and where we are. Macarons are the door she didn’t have to knock to open—her divine opportunity.

Shelby is continually adding new flavors to her repertoire. You could eat a different flavor every day for two months before starting over again. Today, red velvet and cookies and cream macarons are top sellers. Last summer, blueberry lemon and pink lemonade were two customer favorites. On average, Sh’Macarons, the name she gave her new business venture, sells over a thousand macarons a month and twice as many during Valentine's Day and Christmas. Cookies are available for purchase in local restaurants and shops, including Tappas, The General Store, and Scoops Ice-Cream Shop. Now that she’s a local business owner herself, Shelby has a new appreciation for “shopping local” and its impact on the community.

It’s easy to appreciate the impact of Shelby’s work as an RN. But I’d like to suggest that her macarons' beauty, creativity, and great taste have an important impact of their own. What this little French version of an Italian cookie brings to the table is an infusion of color and flavor. And while the presentation is important, ultimately, it’s all about the taste. Taste is so powerful that it can affect our perceptions and even our beliefs. The Psalmist wrote, Taste and see God’s goodness. (Ref. Psalms 34:8) Everything we do impacts the world. Even baking macarons. Sometimes it just takes an adventurous eight year-old girl to show us the open door right in the center of our faithfulness.