Zumbaron Day 2017

Zumbo changed in annual Zumbaron day from Nov to March to align with World Macaron Day. I thought I missed Zumbaron Day in 2016 but I did. I went to Zumbaron Day 2015 and managed to get a signed box + photo. They also had a comp last year where people could create a flavour and they made it. They brought back some of macarons from the comp last time. This year I did something unbelievably crazy-waking up at 6am for macarons before work. Yay for no traffic on Sunday morning. I did manage to grab some freebies unlike last time!

60 flavours (but one wasn't available, so 59). Most were different from the last Zumbaron Day.

that gold 👌

other flavours

Most flavours they specially create for Zumbaron Day and not available on a normal basis, which makes this more 'exclusive.'

price list (same price as 2015) some flavours had an additional price

freebies

First 80 customers get a free goodies bag. The cake mix boxes retail for $7.80 each, get some sweet popcorn and chocolate. (Side note, I wonder what happened to his macaron bake at home kits...) I got there around 7:45am and wow, there were over 10 people in front of me. Did not expect so many people were as keen as me. At 7:55am, the line was three times as long, so lucky I got there early-ish. They opened at 8 but I still had to wait 15mins because people were buying over 4 boxes. How do people even have the money or stomach space? I also asked for the pink box-that graphic designer they hired did a pretty good job, design was so cute! I also requested she try to split up the flavours so they look more colourful in the box, as most of the macarons were the orange/brown tone of flavours.

Box of 12-$33 (plus a few dollars extra for some premium flavours)

Flavours from top, left to right

- Gen Mai Cha & Matcha Tea: You could taste the roasted green tea and a good amount of matcha. More on the sweeter side as expected, would prefer more of the bitter roasted matcha.

- Dirty Chai: There was a good kick of spice in it which balanced well with the touch of espresso.

- Cookie Dough, Cookies & Cream: Should have picked a different flavour since all I could taste was a really sweet cookies and cream flavour. The filling wasn'y fully opaque either, not sure what it was made of.

- Bloody Mary: I've never had the proper drink before, but I probably wouldn't order it. Not a fan of that tomato juice flavour, but you can taste a bit of the alcohol which I liked. According to my bro, it tasted quite close to the actual drink.

- BBB Blackcurrant, Blackberry & Baileys: Could taste the sweet blackcurrant and blackberry flavour but couldn't taste the baileys even though that's a pretty distinct flavour. This macaron was the most disappointing, it fell apart when i picked it up. Literally broke and stuck to the macarons next to it, and ripped the other shells. You can see in the first photo the shell was already breaking, the other side of it had a massive patched ripped since the shell was too soft/moist ):

- Apple Cider & Honey: More sweet from the honey, the apple cider was more subtle, would've liked more.

- Golden Champagne Showers ($3.50): One of my favs. Could taste the champagne flavour in this, loved it! More champagne than last year, maybe because they had a surcharge for this flavour and all that gold spray. The contrast between the black shell and gold was a nice contrast.

- Ginger Kisses: Lovely ginger flavour without being too overpowering

- Rose Smoked Bacon: Another one of my favs. A good amount of smoky bacon/saltiness with the sweet rose flavour. As weird as it sounds, the flavours really complemented each other.

- Salted Black Truffle Butter Caramel ($4): I loveee my truffles, so it was quite obvious to get this flavour. The truffle flavour is definitely there, but didn't taste like truffle oil which is a bit more fake and probably hard to bake with. I think they used truffle paste incorporated into the black shell, real truffle is normally shaved onto dishes, so to infuse flavour it'll probably be in a truffle past. The caramel flavour was in the orange shell, and the salted flavour in the filling which wasn't too salted so you can still taste the truffle in it.

- Watermelon and Strawberry-didn't realised I've already tried this flavour. taste like it sounds, but this time there was hardly any black sesame.

- Tumeric Latte- good hit of numeric with a creamy centre. This one was a bit thin though. I actually don't mind that slightly medicinal flavour in a tumeric latte or the actual plant.

Onto the texture. Obviously almost all these macarons were baked over a day ago, since it would be impossible to make them throughout the night for an 8am opening (and as if people in Aus would work throughout the night). I'm guessing some of these were made 3 days before Zumbaron day, because you can definitely tell the quality is not quite right and not fresh. Most of these were quite moist and wet mainly from the cream or ganache filling moisture slowly seeping into the shells. Some shells were a bit hollow which didn't help either. When you picked them up, especially the BBB literally fell apart in my fingers. Some shells edges didn't hold it's shape standing inside the box, which meant they were quite fragile.

Yes, I was disappointed with the quality of these since the texture was kind of like mushed up inside your mouth. Except for one (forgot which flavour), you didn't get a nice crunch on the outside shell and chewy on the inside. No where near as nice as the fresh ones in Paris. Maybe I'll try Zumbarons again when they do make it a bit more fresh and don't have to mass bake. I do commend them on the creative flavours, cause that's what I mainly bought them for. 

Also, they stuffed up my friend's order majorly. She's allergic to nuts and they gave her a Peanut Butter Cup flavoured macaron. Luckily she didn't swallow it, but imagine if young children just shoved whatever they saw into their mouth, and the parents didn't check beforehand, that would be disastrous. Their staff should be more careful next time. They didn't even offer her any 'compensation' apart from swapping it back to the original flavour she requested. 

Although the price hasn't gone up, well they've only increased the macarons from $2.50 to $2.80 only around 2 years ago, the sizes have gone smaller. All the macarons used to fit perfectly in a box of 6, now there is a bit of a gap at the end of the box/between macarons.

  

Look at that gold shimmer

Tl;dr: flavours interesting, texture and service could be improved.