Hervé Lemonon, Executive Pastry Chef at Grand Lapa Macau, gleefully sinks his hands into a stainless steel bowl full of almond flour, powdered sugar and ground coffee. He clenches two fistfuls of the powdery ingredients, then pops his hands open and begins mixing things up by wiggling his fingers. Chef Hervé is making his signature dessert: coffee macarons with caramel chocolate ganache.

“A macaron is delicate, like a woman. You really have to take your time and treat her right,” says Chef Hervé. “It’s not just about good looks. Taste is important too.”

Smiling and joking, winking, and apparently having the time of his life, Hervé beats egg whites, flings in more almond powder and sugar, and folds everything together to create an aromatic, hazel-colored paste. He spoons that into a piping bag and begins squeezing out neat little balls onto a tray. His macarons are soon ready for the oven.

Technically a kind of meringue, macarons were originally just simple cookies, crunchy on the outside and chewy inside, made of ground almonds, sugar and whipped egg whites. Introduced to France by the Italian pastry chefs of Catherine de’ Medici in 1533, when she married King Henry II, the modern form of the confection was created in 1930 by Pierre Desfontaines, who had the simple but brilliant idea to make a miniature sandwich out of two macarons and chocolate ganache. Today macarons are France’s most popular dessert. Ladurée, the famous Parisian pâtisserie founded by Desfontaines’ grandfather, sells 15,000 macarons a day.

Chef Hervé has lived in Asia for more than twenty years and knows how to tone down the sweetness of his creations to suit local tastes. “I’ll tell you a trick,” he says. “Making the caramel for the ganache, you heat the sugar until just before it burns. If you do that, the caramel won’t be so sweet, but you’ll still get the wonderful aroma and beautiful golden color.”

While Hervé caramelizes the sugar, his assistant chef, Bobby, prepares a mixture of milk chocolate and cream for the ganache. Hervé says he’d be lost without the help of his talented team.

“Where’s the butter?” asks Hervé.

“There is no more butter,” says Bobby.

Hervé pivots and opens the refrigerator. Bobby grabs a carton of heavy cream and pours it into a mixer. Hervé punches the start button. They work together like one chef with four arms.

Fifteen minutes later, the cream has been transformed into a lump of pale yellow butter. Unable to resist, I spread a bit on a chunk of bread and sprinkle it with a few grains of sea salt—delicious. I want more.

Hervé quickly rescues the butter and adds it to the milk chocolate and cream. Meanwhile, the macaron cookies have come out of the oven. We’re almost there. The creamy chocolate ganache is piped onto the first cookie and, to temper the sweetness, sprinkled with a few flakes of fleur de sel. A second cookie is popped on as a lid, and voilà—it’s a macaron!

“The secret to an excellent macaron is texture,” says Hervé. “It has to be chewy, not hard or crispy. To get that chewy texture, we keep the completed macarons in the freezer for a week.”

After watching all the delicious ingredients go in, one by one, I’m dying to taste the final product. Hervé offers a macaron that’s ready. It’s perfect to look at, but I don’t spend much time looking. I bite right in. The crisp, rounded crusts of the cookies give way to the chewy interior promised by Hervé, and bits of coffee bitterness dissolve into the chocolaty sweetness of the ganache—yes. Yes!

“Hervé, I say, “what’s your secret?”

“I wake up every day and I am inspired by life,” he says. “You have to open your eyes and feel the wonder of the world around you. I want to inspire people.”

If you love macarons, you owe it to yourself to try some made by somebody who loves to make them. Chef Hervé is your man.

For inquires at the Cake Shop of Grand Lapa: (853) 8793 3810

By Jean Alberti

Photography by David Hartung