She’s macarons the master of
Toronto law clerk known as MellyEatsWorld on Instagram makes pigs, bunnies and more
Whenever I’m about to bite into the latest food fad, be it charcoal ice cream, unicorn lattes or raindrop cakes, I’m ready to be underwhelmed. There’s a reason why these foods use non-culinary descriptors rather than words such as salty, sweet, grilled or spiced: they’re designed to look good first and foremost. Taste is an afterthought.
But when Melissa Huang, better known to her 56,000 (and counting) Instagram followers as MellyEatsWorld on Instagram, gave me a box of her adorable animal-shaped macarons to try, they were excellent: the shells were crispy and airy with the requisite “feet” and the ganache she made using a mixture of Lindt chocolate, balsamic and homemade strawberry preserves was cloyingly sweet with just the right amount of tartness that made me want more.
It’s a remarkable feat considering she is a self-taught baker who just started honing in on macarons in the past year. This is even more noteworthy because she bakes after a long day at her full-time job as a law clerk. Huang considers herself an amateur baker and has turned down offers to sell wholesale and fly across the world to teach a class on how to make her animal macarons. However, she was happy to share some time (and macarons) with me.
It’s a Sunday afternoon and Huang, 36, is hunched over her dining room table at her condo near the St. Lawrence Market. Using the finest pastry tip to draw lines as thin as a pen, she pipes little claws, whiskers and noses on a batch of brown oval macarons she baked the night before to turn into beavers. She says her hands aren’t the steadiest, but the lines are precise and uniform. They look like they were printed by machine. Still, the macarons don’t always come out perfectly: a previous batch of beavers cracked in the oven and she had to start all over the night before I arrived. “I’ll smear them with blood and turn them into zombie beavers,” she says. “Waste not, want not.”
To make two dozen of these edible rodents, Huang estimates it takes anywhere from six to 10 hours from the time she starts whipping up egg whites to cleaning up. The most time-consuming parts are letting the batter air-dry before piping more batter on top to form appendages such as arms, legs and tails; and decorating the macarons one at a time, meticulously ensuring the eyes are symmetrical and in this case the teeth give the beavers their mischievous grin.
“I thought about selling macarons, but between renting a commercial kitchen and spending10 hours just to make two dozen, I would have to sell a macaron for $10,” she says, adding that she turns down wholesale and catering requests on a daily basis. “People ask if I’m worried that bakeries would steal my designs. I tell them, ‘If they can spend that much time making these and still turn a profit, good for them.’ ” As of now, the lucky few who get to enjoy her cre- ations are friends, family and coworkers.
Huang got into baking as a kid when her mom was frustrated with not being able to make a cream puff. She tried her hand at it, following the recipe from a cookbook, and was successful. This encouraged her to take on baking as a hobby. When she was about to marry her husband Jeremy six years ago, she thought about baking her own macarons for her wedding to save money on catering. After making trays upon trays of cracked macarons, combined with the stress that came with wedding planning, she gave up.
But in the last year, Huang gave macarons another try, spurred on by wanting to make something cute for her little nephew. She looked online for a recipe (she swears by the macaron recipe from pastry chef and YouTuber Beth Le Manach) and was inspired by the animal macarons on a baking blog called Loving Creations for You. She started with polar bears and when that was successful, she moved on to pandas and posted a picture on her Instagram account, which at that point were just photos of meals she ate at restaurants.
About five months ago, her pictures were picked up by websites including Bored Panda, Country Living and Comedy Central UK, giving her an international fan base overnight.
Since then, she has expanded her repertoire to almost two dozen designs such as pigs, chickens, sheep, bunnies, bears, monkeys and mythical beasts including unicorns.
“Once you have success, you’re encouraged to do more,” she says. “I love making art, but I live in a condo and don’t have a lot of room to put things. This is edible art, so once I’m done, I can give it away or eat it so it won’t take up space. I know people mean well when they tell me they’re too pretty to eat, but it’s food, eat it! Otherwise, it ceases to be food and what’s the point of me baking?”
She acknowledges that the amount of labour that goes into each macaron wouldn’t make for a sustainable business, but hopes that one day she could teach classes on macaron decorating.
This past year, Huang started baking classes at George Brown’s culinary school to get the foundation to eventually lead a class. Her bookcase is full of pastry books, her favourite being a macaron book by master pastry chef Pierre Hermé, who created unorthodox flavours such as mint and peas and his most famous, ketchup. Huang was tempted at one point to accept an offer to be flown to Indonesia to do a cooking demo, but she didn’t have any vacation days from her job.
For now, Huang is baking for herself, seeing it as a creative outlet to counter her desk job.
“I enjoy the meticulousness of making the macarons, it’s therapeutic and you can turn your brain off and let your hands do the work,” she says. “But sometimes, you don’t need a profound reason for doing things. I just like cute stuff.” karonliu@thestar.ca