TOPIC	DETAILS	GRADE
Price	Fairly priced. Makarohn cost per macaron is $2.25, when the average online is $2.10	7/10
Order process	Not smooth website. Each flavor has to be added to cart individually. That is at least 24 clicks before order.	4.5/10
Shipping	Priced at $9.99 flat rate, with Free shipping over $69. Ships with USPS. No overnight shipping or expedite options.	6/10
Transit	Good. Macarons received 5 days after ordering, 2 days after shipping.	7/10
For events?	No possibility of bigger set than 12 macarons or towers. No website option to add a shipping date.	2/10
Who are Makarohn?	No name or picture of who are the bakers. No pick up store or physical address.	3/10
Unboxing	Fairly packaged. Insulated pouch and thin bubble wrap.	6/10
Quality	Every macaron was wet and melted. Most likely shipped frozen and thaw in transit.	3/10
Taste	Way too buttery. Makarohn doesn't have the signature taste of an authentic macaron. Not good texture.	2/10

In this blog post, I give my full Makarohn reviews.

Ordering process, shipping options, transit time, packaging, taste test authenticity.. I go over everything.

Below is a video about how a macaron taste like. I also describe the criteria I will be using for this review for transparency.

• About
• Price
• Order process
• Shipping options
• Transit time
• Who are Makarohn
• Makarohn unboxing
• What's inside
• The macarons: First look
• The macarons: Closer look
• Quality test
• Makarohn taste test
• My review conclusion

• About this review

I'm Anthony, CEO at Pastreez. My wife and I are French chefs from Le Cordon Bleu Paris.

When it comes to macarons, we consider ourselves experts!

The objective of this review is to give you insights of macarons from Ma-ka-rohn.

I ordered macarons from their website, and detailed every single step from the ordering process to the taste test.

I detail every topic to help you decide if Makarohn is a good fit for you.

• Price

Prices from Ma-ka-rohn are fair. At $2.25 for each macaron, it's higher than the $2.10 average you could find online.

That being said, the size of their macarons are a bit bigger than the tradition macaron you can find in Paris.

Something important to mention, Ma-ka-rohn macarons come in sets of twelve. There are no bigger set, or gift boxes. Only towers for events.

That can be a bummer if you wish to order a beautiful gift box to send to family or friends, or if you wish to get desserts when you have guests.

• Order process

On the first look, the website is simple, with lots of macaron flavors.

But the order process from Ma-ka-rohn is not smooth.

To order from the website, you need to add to cart each and every single macaron flavor. For a set of twelve, you have to click twelve times to view each flavor, and twelve more clicks to add to cart.

It means you would click at least twenty four times to order twelve macarons. It's way too much.

As a result of this, I ordered only ten out of twelve macarons: after clicking this many times I lost count. I should have double check my cart though.

• Shipping options

The only shipping option from Ma-ka-rohn is called "standard shipping" at $9.99. It is the same cost for every state in the US according to the test I ran.

Shipping cost is fair, but you need to know that the company ships with USPS Priority Mail.

USPS is less reliable than UPS or Fedex, but it allows to ship to PO BOX which is a good point (as opposed to Dana's Bakery, that do not ship to PO BOX, our full review is coming soon).

That can be an issue though if you need macarons overnight, in two days, in three days, or later on for an event. Makarohn do not give the flexibility to do that.

You also want to know that they ship only Mondays and Wednesdays. Orders placed after Wednesday will ship the following week.

Note that the company do offer Free shipping over $69 of purchase. Free shipping is always great.

• Transit time

See below the transit time for my order with Ma-ka-rohn:

• Ordered on Saturday Aug. 21st at 11:38am

• Shipped on Tuesday Aug. 24th at 10:44am, with USPS Priority Mail

• Delivered on Thursday Aug. 26th at 10:03am at my PO BOX (two business days transit)

Time to ship and time in transit are good, considering they are using USPS.

• Who are Makarohn?

I like to know who are the chefs and bakers when I buy food online. At Ma-ka-rohn, bakers are not identified. I tried on their websites and their social medias, no information to be found. No names or pictures.

When you buy macarons online, you purchase a whole experience. It is a good point to know the name and face of the bakers (learn more about Pastreez French chefs here).

My research shows that Makarohn owners are based in Miami, with an experience in restaurants. But I couldn't find anything else about them.

• Makarohn unboxing

Let's dig in. I received the package from Makarohn on Thursday and proceeded with the review the same day.

Package arrived at 10:03am. The shipping label used was Priority Mail from USPS.

The first aspect of the box shows two huge stickers "Refrigerate upon arrival" and "Fragile". Which is a good point considering the content being perishable.

That being said, I was surprised by the lack of branding on the package. No Makarohn sticker or custom tape, nothing that really helps identify the package.

Purchasing macarons online is a journey. I would have appreciated some kind of branding on the outside packaging so I could be excited to open it.

• What's inside

• Two cards

Upon opening the package, there are two cards included: One that explain how to best enjoy the macarons, and the other one that shows the macaron flavors menu.

That is a good point. Macarons are delicate treats and the steps to enjoy are important to follow for best degustation.

The macaron flavors card is incomplete. I will get back to this point later on, but some macarons I picked weren't on the menu card. Some flavors were hard to identify.

Then, there is a sticker to remind you which flavors you picked. It can be useful to identify which is what.

• Thin Bubble wrap

After the two cards, you find bubble wrap around the insulated pouch. Those bubble wrap were clearly not enough for a safe transit.

After taking a closer look, the bubble wrap is really, really thin. It does not protect the package enough.

The pouch was able to move inside the carton box, which is never a good sign because your package will be shaken by carriers during transit.

This is most likely what caused the macarons blister to be bumped all over: Multiple macarons were broken (more pictures on the next steps).

• Insulated pouch with ice pack

The insulated bubble pouch is a good thing. It's a great way to protect the macarons from temperature change throughout the transit.

While the ice pack might seem a good idea, in my experience it is useless. Ice packs stay cold only few hours. With days in transit, the ice pack is at ambient temperature within the first day.

I found that ice packs are more a "psychological" thing rather than useful. Receiving food with ice pack in the package make us feel "better".

But think about it. Upon delivery, the ice pack is warm. Can it also mean that the macarons are not received fresh?

Macarons usually travel perfectly fine, as long as you don't use too much butter. The thing is Ma-ka-rohn uses a LOT of butter in their recipe.

So it is a challenge for the company to make sure their macarons travel safe. And this small ice pack sadly don't make a difference here.

On the insulated pouch, there is the flavor selection from your order. That is great, because I couldn't remember which ones I purchased.

• The macarons: First look

When I opened the insulated pouch, I noticed that the 12 macarons blister is sealed with a plastic shrink wrap. It is a good point, but since the blister was already in an insulated pouch, I'm not sure it is necessary.

The blister was damaged and bumped, which caused the macarons to be damaged.

It might be because of transit (maybe UPS and Fedex would have treated the package better). And also because of the poor packaging.

The thin bubble wrap was a no-go in my opinion, because the pouch inside was able to move around inside the carton box.

Then, the plastic wrap was SO tight around the macarons blister, it literally deformed it, which also damaged the macarons. The good idea to add shrink wrap has become a bummer.

For butter to travel safe, it would require faster transit time (maybe one to two business days maximum), and better technology than ice packs to transit fresh longer.

• Makarohn macarons: Closer look

Alright, now is the time to open the plastic shrink wrap and have a closer look at the macarons from Makarohn.

I noticed that five out of ten macarons were broken and / or melted. Ouch!

After the general look, I like to smell it before to taste it.

A typical smell of macarons are the almond and fruit or chocolate depending of the flavors you picked.

I was disappointed with the smell here. The macarons were clearly sent out frozen, and thaw during transit.

How can I tell? There is a characteristic smell of thawing, and I could see water drop inside the package.

This comes from thawing: Water goes from solid to liquid, and since the package was air sealed (remember the plastic shrink wrap), it has no where to escape.

Lastly, as you can see on the pictures half of the macarons were either wet or melted. This is coming from two things: using too much butter (melt easily), and thawing (wet easily).

All the macaron flavors I ordered had butter in it. Some too much.

At Pastreez, we do not use butter at all. All our fillings are filled handmade ganache that contain real fruit purées and premium chocolate.

With these ingredients the macarons are smoother and most importantly do not melt in transit.

Each bakery has their recipe. Ma-ka-rohn chose to bake with butter, that is completely fine! But You should then adapt your shipping and package to transit accordingly.

I have to say, I am disappointed with my purchase so far. I know Ma-ka-rohn is very popular, but the experience hasn't been great for now.

Hopefully, the quality of the macarons and the taste test will be better!

• Makarohn quality

Almost there. Before to try each and every macaron flavor, I checked the quality of the macarons.

I cut every single macaron in half for you to see what is inside, and get a better feeling of its texture.

You're looking at few aspects:

• Texture / Freshness

A great macaron texture is crunchy outside, chewy inside. This balance is obtained by the perfect fit between shells and filling.

The filling will wet enough the shells for it to slightly lose its hardness. The outer shell will stay slightly crunchy. All together, it is the macaron taste signature.

Ma-ka-rohn macarons texture were okay for most, and wet for three out of ten.

The texture was closer to a cake than an authentic macaron. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't bad. But I was surprise with the texture.

I didn't expect a macaron to be fluffy and slightly dry. See below, an example of flavors that had this cake texture:

I think it was because of the thawing being too intense. Most of the macarons I received lost their crunchy / chewy balance, and were a bit dry.

On the texture part, one important thing to remember is that almost all of Makarohn macarons are made with lots of butter.

Most flavors will have a similar taste due to this. The company share videos of the macarons making, and I could confirm they had a lot of butter in their recipe.

For macarons, there are two types of fillings: Buttercream and ganache. Ganache are premium fillings that use real fruit purées and white chocolate to sweeten, but not overwhelm the taste.

It is also lighter, and travel safer because it won't melt that easy. That is what we make at Pastreez.

On the other hand, buttercream is a filling with a butter base. That is what Ma-ka-rohn use. Now a good buttercream can be delicious.

But I felt these macarons were way too buttery, as every flavor was hard to distinguish, using the same butter base.

• Hollow

On that part Makarohn did good. Almost none of their shells were hollowed, which is a sign of experienced bakers. From my research, Makarohn has been in business for 6 years.

Hollow macarons happen when air is trapped in the shells, after piping the batter.

An easy way to remove air in the batter is to tap your pan sheet on the table multiple times (we have an online macaron class coming soon here).

• Color / roundness

Colors were okay even if a little brownish. That might be caused by a longer stay in the oven (toasted marshmallow was slightly burnt, but I think it was because of the toasting process).

Roundness was good. Upon my research on Ma-ka-rohn Instagram, they pipe the macaron batter through a depositor machine, which makes it almost impossible to mess with roundness.

While I prefer 100% handmade macarons, I can't complain about roundness here (I know I'm picky).

• Macarons feet / size

Lastly, the macarons feet of Makarohn were on the okay side.

A macaron "foot" is the swollen part of the macaron shell. This helps you check if the macaron has been baked correctly.

There is no perfect answer when it comes to macarons feet. It just has to be visible and not too high (about half feet, half top shell).

Makarohn macarons feet were okay, a little bit too big. They might have been baked on a slight higher temperature to lower the time in the oven (mass production). But that doesn't really interfere with taste.

On the size part, the macarons were slightly bigger than an authentic Parisian macaron, about 1.9 inches of diameter. Nothing major here.

• Makarohn Taste test

Drum rolls, here is the big moment: The taste test. I reviewed one by one each macaron flavor I ordered from Makarohn.

• Ferrero rocher macaron

Good. I couldn't really taste the "Ferrero rocher" taste, with that little crunch inside the filling, but that was a good enough macaron. It was more of a classic chocolate macaron to me.

• Cotton Candy macaron

This macaron flavor was way too sweet, and melted. I wouldn’t recommend this one.

• Champagne macaron

This flavor is to avoid. Since Champagne does not really have a strong taste, it was compensated with too much butter. Note that I don't think there was alcohol in it. I couldn't find that information on their website.

• Rose Raspberry macaron

The taste was okay to good. I don't think it was real raspberry fruit purée thought, most likely raspberry extract and butter.

• Pistachio macaron

Again, there was too much butter. If there was real handmade Pistachio inside the filling, I couldn't feel it.

• Coconut cake macaron

The coconut cake macaron flavor was good. I liked the fact that they added shredded coconut on the shells as well. But again, you could feel too much butter.

• Toasted Marshmallow macaron

The shells were rock hard and burnt. I couldn’t taste the flavor. My guess is the filling was not consistent enough to wet the shells. It also was burnt in the process of "toasting".

• Popcorn macaron

No flavor of popcorn (do popcorn has a flavor?). Mostly butter. It's great to be creative about macaron flavors. But in my opinion it needs to be about a flavor that has a twist.

• Churros macaron

This flavor was OK, but same here.. A bit of cinnamon with a lot of butter. I think Makarohn makes a main buttercream, then add few extract to make new flavors. Because a lot of flavors taste very similar to each other.

• Crème brûlée

This macaron flavor was good. I would say it was the one that would "stands out" of my selection.

• My conclusion

If you buy macarons online from Ma-ka-Rohn, don't expect to get authentic ones like in Paris.

Their products are closer to cakes in terms of quality, and I wasn't able to get the actual flavor of each one, due to the high quantity of butter used.

Since Makarohn is 100% online with no pick up or stores, I was disappointed with the shipping experience. I would expect them to know about their products, and make sure it does not arrive melted or broken.

All that being said, their pricing are fair, colors were appealing and they do fun flavors like Harry Potter themed.

I hope this review helped you in your purchase decision!

We have a 7 free macarons deal today for $42+ orders. Claim the promocode below!