I’m a bit of a macaron obsessive. And for the record, I fell in love with these bite-sized French cookies before they were cool – before they started showing up in every bakery in the U.S. and waaaaay before they hit the frozen food section of Trader Joe’s and Aldi.

I can still remember how excited I was when, quite a chunk of time ago on a trip to Paris, I found out that Le Jour du Macaron was going to happen while I was there. This yearly macaron smorgasbord is the brainchild of famous pastry chef Pierre Hermé, and it has a philanthropic twist. For one day, you can visit Relais Desserts pâtisseries around the city (actually, the whole country and a few other cities internationally) and get a macaron of your choosing when you make any donation; the proceeds support a specific cause each year. I spent hours walking the city on a macaron binge and ended up overloaded – but incredibly happy.

A few years later, some fellow Francophiles and I decided to recreate these meringue treats. The first trial was fantastic: chewy cookies with the signature “foot,” an edge along the bottom of the macaron where it rises and then falls in the oven. Sadly, after that initial batch, we struggled. For having only three basic ingredients – almond meal, sugar and egg whites – they’re temperamental little beasts. We tried valiantly weekend after weekend, analyzing various recipes and baking as many as we could, but we never recreated the success of our first batch. Then we decided to move on to other challenges and our macraron efforts became history.

Fast forward a few years to when I’m browsing through Pinterest and come upon a recipe from the blog Karen’s Kitchen claiming to be foolproof. Having heard that claim before and striking out, I was skeptical. The key, Karen said, was to use meringue powder in the mixture, which I’m assuming stabilizes the beaten egg whites. With my curiosity piqued, I headed to Michael’s to curbside pickup the meringue powder and let some egg whites left over from a ravioli-making session last weekend “age” in the refrigerator.

Today was testing day and I’m happy to report that the macarons came out almost perfect! Next time – and there will definitely be a next time, sometime soon – I’ll add more powdered food coloring (you can barely tell that I added red to these) and make them a little bit smaller.

I stuffed them with a generic chocolate ganache (meaning, I didn’t follow a specific recipe): I heated up 3.5 ounces of heavy cream and poured it over 4 ounces of chopped dark chocolate. After letting it sit for a few minutes, I stirred the mixture until smooth. I cooled it a bit in the fridge, then used my hand blender to whip it up into a spreadable consistency and spread it between the cookie halves. The verdict? It’s almost like being in Paris! (Well, not really. But it’s probably as close as I’ll get for a while.)