Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

Sugar crash is a very real and very brutal thing, my friends. Today is the first day of spring and today is Macaron Day NYC 2014 !  You couldn't have asked for more perfect weather for the annual macaron scavenger hunt, organized by Chef Francois Payard and inspired by Jour du Macaron in Paris.  Bakeries, patisseries, macaron-eries all across the city participate in handing out complimentary macarons, with the added charitable aspect that a portion of any macaron purchases during the day will be donated to City Harvest. Behold, my macarons (which I think are some of the food porn-iest things to photograph, for some reason.  Those feet!  That bulge!  Such colors!  Ooh la la): Francois Payard Bakery / Francois Payard Patisserie  orange blossom  passionfruit  avec CHEF FRANCOIS PAYARD! Mille-Feuille Bakery all the goodies salted caramel Sugar & Plumm  raspberry Bisous Ciao ...

A couple of years ago, Francois Payard, of Francois Payard Bakery, invented my favorite holiday: Macaron Day.  Well, okay so he brought the tradition over from France, but it really doesn't matter because Macaron Day is The Best Day!! Think about this, friends: for one whole day, you can visit participating bakeries and get free macarons from them. I'm going to let that statement sink in for a bit.... Exciting right?!  I'm almost hesitant to write about it because then we'd be letting out our big secret and then all our favorite macaron places will be crowded and run out of macarons this year...but this was how we found one of our enduring favorite macaron places in New York City. Bisous Ciao Located in the Lower East Side in a very sleek,  minimalist shop, Bisous Ciao gave out a dark chocolate ganache macaron last year, embellished with a little pink bisous on the top of the cookie.  Since then, I've practically fallen in love with the place...