Rural baker creates beautiful macarons.
by Paul Newton | pnewton@ruralmissouri.coop
The small French pastries had consumed Juli Ward’s home kitchen. Juli and her pastry partner — Kylianne Wilmering — were busy for weeks prepping these precise cookies — 2,000 of them — for the Lake of the Ozarks Food Truck Festival in September. Juli carefully handled the macaronage — folding the dry ingredients into the wet while making macarons — ensuring they passed the figure eight test for the proper consistency. Kylianne matched sets of baked macarons and piped in delicious fillings — one by one until they reached 2,000.
“That was by far our largest offering since we started,” says Juli. “We had about 250 hours put into it by the time we had done it all.”
Juli has made macarons for more than four years through her business, Aunt JuJu Macarons. The home baker makes most of her sweets from inside her rural Laurie kitchen ranging from special orders of a few dozen for retirement and birthday parties to weddings and larger gatherings — like the food truck festival — a few times per year.
Cooking runs in Juli’s family. She remembers her grandma, JoAnn Moulton, being an outstanding cook and her aunts and uncles owned restaurants around the Lake of the Ozarks. She got the urge to try macarons in 2020 while watching cooking shows.
“These were professional bakers and they would make a macaron, sometimes they came out and sometimes they didn’t,” she says. “I was making banana bread and cookies like everyone else back then. I was interested in seeing how hard it was to make macarons.”
She learned very quickly. Juli found a recipe and attempted her first batch. “They looked like moon pies and the tops had ‘volcanoed’ out,” the Co-Mo Electric Cooperative member says. “They didn’t look appetizing, but they were edible.”
Juli sought out all she could about the finicky cookie using online resources, and today specializes in French macarons — not to be confused with coconut macaroon drop cookies. Every cookie she makes is either gluten-free or comes with a gluten-free option. “The easiest way to describe it is a French sandwich cookie,” she says.
Juli used her newfound macaron knowledge in 2020 to try another batch in a few different flavors. She liked the results and sent them to Lake Christian Academy for Teacher Appreciation Week and made more for her daughter’s birthday. They went over well, so she decided she would sell them at the Laurie Hillbilly Fair to see if this was something she could do in the future. “I sold out by noon on the first day and took orders for 300 more,” she says.
As she’s preparing a batch, she talks through the intricate steps such as wiping down cooking hardware with lemon juice, sifting the almond flour and powdered sugar three times and the perfect amount of time to let them rest before baking.
“The bottoms have this little distinctive edge called the feet that’s caused by the air coming out the bottom of the shell while it is baking,” she says. “If you don’t let them rest long enough, you won’t get the feet and it will ‘volcano’ out the top. But too long and you have other problems.”
It takes plenty of patience to make macarons, which Juli attributes to her 10-year career teaching third grade.
“The chance of making a perfect macaron is very small, but a successful macaron with great flavor is more achievable than one might think,” she says. “So our goal is to have a beautiful cookie that tastes like an explosion of flavors in your mouth. Something you’ll remember.”
Since selling at her first Hillbilly Fair, Juli hasn’t stopped fulfilling orders big and small. Despite the finicky nature of the cookies, she takes pride in making them look beautiful. That’s where her lead decorator, Kylianne, comes in. “I call her the ganache queen because she has perfected that and she’s an artist at heart,” Juli says, noting Winnie the Pooh-themed macarons Kylianne decorated by hand.
“I think they’re fun to make with Juli and I love putting stuff together and making it pretty,” Kylianne says. “So that’s why the filling and decorating are mostly my part.”
In addition to festivals, Aunt JuJu Macarons takes custom orders of at least two dozen per flavor to be picked up in the Lake of the Ozarks area.
This Valentine’s Day, Juli and Kylianne will be making chocolate-covered strawberry macarons. A pair of heart-shaped macaron shells are filled with strawberry buttercream and homemade jam, topped with sprinkles to resemble strawberry seeds, dipped in semisweet chocolate and drizzled with vanilla-almond bark. They’ll be available in quantities of six for local pickup.
“I enjoy the challenge of making macarons and figuring out new flavor combinations,” Juli says. “But seeing the finished product and the customers’ excitement is my favorite part.”
For more information about Aunt JuJu Macarons and their offerings, email aunt.juju.macarons@gmail.com or find them on Facebook.