Comments: As trendy as macarons may be – and they are trendy – they are not the simplest confections to make. The Japanese pastry chef Hisako Ogita takes you step-by-step (and with many, many photos) through the recipe and the process, from how to make the pied (as the little "foot" at the base of the macaron is called) to how to keep macarons from cracking but have a glossy finish. For all intents and purposes, there are two recipes in the book – one for the cookie, one for the butter cream filling – with many variations.

The combinations are almost limitless – how about pistachio with raspberry cream, chocolate with mango cream, sesame with white ganache, hazelnut with praline cream, rose with lemon curd, cassis with blueberry jam cream, and, for the more adventurous, purple yam with coconut cream, and green tea with red bean paste? We could go on, but we're getting tired of typing….

For the most part, the instructions and illustrations are clear and straightforward, the equipment probably at hand, and the ingredients generally accessible (though finding powered sugar without corn starch (an essential!) may be a challenge). Some instructions are a little bit sketchy, though, and some pointers are out of sequence, so this will mostly appeal to the cook who knows his or her way around the kitchen.

There is a charming, small chapter on wrapping and packaging macarons as gifts that anyone would be thrilled to receive, although bowing to Japanese tastes, these desserts may be less sweet than most Americans are used to.

We are not clear on why macaron is spelled with one "o" throughout the book. It may be a an issue of translating the book from Japanese to English, which we can live with. And truth be told, there are a half dozen recipes in the back of the book for using up all the egg yolks that are left over from making macarons, which triples or quadruples the number of recipes in the book.

Frankly, the pictures alone are reason enough to buy the book.