I first met Carla Laureano in Indianapolis in 2013, a few months after she had release her fabulous debut novel, Five Days in Skye. It’s been a thrill to see her writing career take off and to have read and loved each of her smart and engaging love stories. She is a must read romance writer for me. Make sure she is for you, too. 

For now, enjoy Carla’s guest post, enter the giveaway, and try to not to drool over the macarons!

Over to you, Carla…

Five Lessons Learned from a Macaron

When I wrote Brunch at Bittersweet Café, starring pastry chef Melody Johansson, I developed an obsession with macarons. Not eating them, exactly, though that was part of it, but baking them. If you’ve never tried to make these fussy French sandwich cookies at home, take my word for it: they will show you things about yourself that you never understood before. Control-freak tendencies are laid bare to the world as you realize that the “rules” are more like “guidelines” and don’t necessarily guarantee a perfect outcome. Your perseverance will be tested, especially if you’re bringing them to other people. And if you live at high altitude like I do . . . well, you just might consider a change of zip code.

In the end, however, I was able to walk away from my macaron experiment having learned a bit about baking and a lot about myself.

1. It doesn’t matter what you look like; it’s what you’re made of.

I went into the macaron-making process with a false sense of confidence (after all, I’m an excellent cook and I’ve baked for decades), but I quickly realized that macarons defy all logic and experience. Tray after tray came out fallen, wrinkled, chewy, or hard like biscuits. But as my family swooped in to scarf down my failures and complimented the flavor, if not the texture, I realized that misshapen or not, cookies made of almond flour, egg whites, and lots of sugar were going to be edible. Sure, they weren’t macarons by any objective standard, but they still tasted great with a cup of coffee. When you’re made of the right stuff, the outcome is going to turn out okay, even if it’s not what you intended.

2. Sometimes, even the pros fail. It’s part of the process.

I was sure that there had to be something wrong with me when I was going on seven or eight batches without an unmitigated success. Until I stepped into my favorite French bakery and mentioned my macaron experiments to the girl behind the counter. “Oh, they’re weird,” she said. “We have a cookies-and-cream flavor that fails almost every time. We don’t know why.” If even the French pâtissier had difficulty with his macarons, and he bakes them every day, maybe failure was just part of the process. In order to create something truly exceptional, you have to be prepared to create things that are just barely okay in the process.

3. Sometimes you’ve got to break the rules to get it done.

One of the hotly debated rules in macaron-making has to do with egg whites. Most traditional recipes call for them to be aged at room temperature. Modern ones say it doesn’t really matter, as long as they’re from whole eggs. As my bowl full of yolks filled up, and I couldn’t make custards fast enough to use them, I decided something had to give. I bought cartons of pasteurized egg whites to use instead. And guess what . . . it worked. Or at least it failed at the same rate. This is similar to what I tell my friends when they cringingly admit to relying on frozen food or takeout during busy times: you do what you have to do to get it done. Never criticize what works.

4. Know when good enough is good enough.

At long last, I had perfected my recipe and my technique enough to turn out a respectable batch of macarons. Sure, the feet weren’t all that high, and maybe the insides turned out a little hollow, but they looked and tasted good. Considering how fussy meringue is at high altitudes, I had to admit that perhaps this was as good as it was going to get. In macarons, as in life, sometimes good enough has to be good enough.

5. You don’t have to do everything yourself.

I recently cleaned out the paperwork and downsized my cookbook collections. When I went back to make a new batch of macarons, I discovered that I’d inadvertently thrown out the notebook in which I’d recorded all my tweaks, and the website from which I’d gotten my original recipe was down, perhaps permanently. If I wanted to make them, I would have to start over from scratch. That’s when I decided that as much as I’d enjoyed the experience, I was okay with outsourcing the future macaron-making to a professional, even at two dollars a macaron. Given the work and expertise that goes into it, he’s earned it.

Loved your insights, Carla

Brunch at Bittersweet Cafe

Baker and pastry chef Melody Johansson has always believed in finding the positive in every situation, but seven years after she moved to Denver, she can’t deny that she’s stuck in a rut. One relationship after another has ended in disaster, and her classical French training is being wasted on her night job in a mediocre chain bakery. Then the charming and handsome private pilot Justin Keller lands on the doorstep of her workplace in a snowstorm, and Melody feels like it’s a sign that her luck is finally turning around.

Justin is intrigued by the lively bohemian baker, but the last thing he’s looking for is a relationship. His own romantic failures have proven that the demands of his job are incompatible with meaningful connections, and he’s already pledged his life savings to a new business venture across the country―an island air charter in Florida with his sister and brother-in-law.

Against their better judgment, Melody and Justin find themselves drawn together by their unconventional career choices and shared love of adventure. But when an unexpected windfall provides Melody with the chance to open her dream bakery-café in Denver with her best friend, chef Rachel Bishop, she’s faced with an impossible choice: stay and put down roots with the people and place she’s come to call home . . . or give it all up for the man she loves.

What was the working title?

Brunch at Bittersweet Café was the rare book that had no other title. In fact, I came up with it before I’d even finished the first book in the series, The Saturday Night Supper Club. Knowing the finished title guided the writing process, which was both helpful and a little limiting.

Describe your book in 5 adjectives

Fun, flirty, delicious, heartfelt, angsty.

Which character did you enjoy writing most?

Definitely Justin. I loved the research that I did on his pilot career and his hobby plane (which involved going to a friend’s hangar to check out his own homebuilt aircraft), and his personality was much more like mine, which made writing him easy.

Which character gave you the most grief?

Hands down, Melody. Of all the characters I’ve ever written, she’s the least like me. I based her personality, if not her history, on a friend of mine, and I found myself messaging that friend during the writing: Does this seem like an authentic reaction? What would you do in this situation? Do you really think like this? It was an exercise in getting into the head of someone who is the complete opposite of me, and while it was frustrating in the moment, it’s very satisfying to see the finished product.

What emotions do you think your story will generate in readers?

Well, I hope the romance is deemed swoon-worthy, but I also hope they’ll laugh and think about their own faith. Those are really the three objectives I have for any book I write.

What emotions did you experience while writing this story?

This one was pure joy! You know, when I wasn’t banging my head against the desk. But really, the story came together very quickly and was a lot of fun to create. The editing process was definitely the more laborious part.

How do you choose your characters’ names?

Usually, I make a list of names that “feel” right for the character. Then I look them up in a reference book, The Secret Universe of Names. It’s based on language theory and the supposition that we associate certain sounds with traits based on similar words in the English language, which in turn influences our personality. I don’t know if there’s any scientific evidence for that theory, but almost every real-life person I’ve looked up has found it to be spot-on. The personality descriptions both help me form the character profile at the beginning and also assist me in identifying what’s not working with the name later on.

Thanks SO much, Carla!

Carla Laureano is the RITA Award-winning author of contemporary inspirational romance and Celtic fantasy (as C.E. Laureano). A graduate of Pepperdine University, she worked as a sales and marketing executive for nearly a decade before leaving corporate life behind to write fiction full-time. She currently lives in Denver with her husband and two sons, where she writes during the day and cooks things at night.

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Buy at Amazon: Brunch at Bittersweet Cafe or Koorong

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