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Liz Ward's home-based bakery in Elon, Moonlit Macarons NC, was born out of adverse times. The mom bakes the treats in her home commercial kitchen five to six times a week. Macarons are considered one of the most difficult baked goods to master.
Sprinkles are the finishing touch on Liz Ward's birthday cake-flavored French macarons. She said the colorful sprinkles make an impressive presentation to customers who receive them packed 12 to a box.
Moonlit Macarons NC owner Liz Ward leaves her red KitchenAid stand mixer out on her kitchen counter all the time since she uses it five to six times each week to mix the delicate meringue cookie shells and flavorful buttercream for her French macarons.
Liz Ward's home-based bakery in Elon, Moonlit Macarons NC, was born out of adverse times. The mom bakes the treats in her home commercial kitchen five to six times a week. Macarons are considered one of the most difficult baked goods to master.
Adversity makes some people crumble, but not Elon native Liz Ward. She turned two difficult times in her life into a successful home-based bakery – Moonlit Macarons NC.
Ward is always up for a challenge, which is evidenced by the type of baked good on which she stakes her entire home bakery business – French macarons. Those delicate, light, meringue cookie shells filled with different flavors of buttercream are one of the most difficult baked goods to make, even for a seasoned pastry chef.
Their outcomes are so temperamental, being affected by things that bakers have no control over, such as humidity levels, but they have to learn to adjust or the results are hollow cookie shells, cracked shells or flat shells.
"It's definitely challenging," she said.
Ward made her first macarons in December 2017 out of financial necessity when her sister-in-law requested them for her baby shower. She had never even tasted a macaron. However, when she called around Alamance County to inquire about purchasing them from commercial bakeries she learned two things — hardly any bakeries offered them and the ones who did charged $3 per cookie.
"That was out of my budget," she said. "I figured, I bake. I'll make them. How hard could it be? I went in with a lot of confidence."
She learned quickly why these small cookies, about the size of an Oreo, cost $3 each and knows now they are worth every cent. Macarons are extremely difficult to make, time-consuming and the ingredients have to be top quality. They also have a short shelf life, because their quality can deteriorate quickly if not stored properly.
"My first batch wasn't great," she said. "But they had feet and they did not volcano. I called it a success for my first time making macarons"
Volcano means the meringue cookie shells explode, or crack while baking.
Her next challenge that put macarons back in her life came with the birth of her son, who is now 3. He was diagnosed with food allergies. He could not have peanuts, milk or eggs. He has since outgrown all the allergies except peanuts.
But that early diagnosis had her learning how to cook differently. And as a life-long baker, it had her baking differently, too.
"You don't expect it to be a challenge to feed your child, but it was," Ward said. "So I figured if I could adapt to what I had to feed him, I could run a home bakery business."
She began her side hustle — Moonlit Macarons & More — in 2020. She got her home kitchen set up as commercial certified and began baking cupcakes, drop cookies and macarons. The name of the business came about because she baked at night after working her full-time job at Tempest Aero Group in Burlington while her son slept.
Sprinkles are the finishing touch on Liz Ward's birthday cake-flavored French macarons. She said the colorful sprinkles make an impressive presentation to customers who receive them packed 12 to a box.
The macarons were the star of her baked goods, however, and what she enjoyed doing the most. In 2021, she transitioned Moonlit Macarons & More to Moonlit Macarons NC, making only French macarons.
"I love baking macarons," she said. "Really, it's the only thing that holds my attention consistently. There are so many flavor combinations. I love to research recipes."
Ward has 10 set flavors she offers year-round and adds several flavors for holiday-themed boxes at Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter and more.
Her 10 set flavors are currently vanilla bean, birthday cake, lemon, cinnamon roll, strawberry cheesecake, brownie batter, chocolate sea salt caramel, vanilla latte, almond, and cookies and cream. Customers order and pay in advance on her website, www.moonlitmacs.com, and she delivers them at drop-off points in Burlington. In addition, Ward also maintains Instagram and Facebook business pages where customers can view her work and learn about her upcoming special holiday flavors.
After drizzling a bit of icing on the birthday cake-flavored macarons, Liz Ward drops colorful sprinkles on the wet icing.
Ward has some tips for anyone wanting to try macaron making. The most important tip is to "mise en place." The French phrase means everything in place. That's how you have to approach making the tricky meringue shells, she said.
"It's really important when you are baking macarons that you have everything in place and measured out before you start mixing," she said. "You do not have time to stop and weigh out dry ingredients."
Over time, Ward discovered she gets the best results using recipes where her ingredients from the almond flour to the egg whites are measured by weight on a scale, not measured using cups or tablespoon measurements.
Liz Ward, owner of Moonlit Macarons NC, uses a jelly pan lined with a non-stick stilt pad when decorating her macarons.
"Measuring using cup and teaspoon directions is not precise enough," she said. "You have to weigh it out. Macarons are not a one-size-fits-all experience. They are going to be different based on the environment. You have to adjust for humidity. If it's raining, I have to change things. There are certain times of the year I have to change the temperature of my oven to bake the shells. It's a learning process."
Moonlit Macarons NC owner Liz Ward leaves her red KitchenAid stand mixer out on her kitchen counter all the time since she uses it five to six times each week to mix the delicate meringue cookie shells and flavorful buttercream for her French macarons.
In addition to her website customers, Ward makes six dozen macarons weekly for Steepd, the tearoom on the Elon University campus.
So far there are no plans to quit her daytime job to do Moonlit Macarons NC full time. Ward said one, she enjoys her other job, but also she's also not a high risk-taker when it comes to making a living.
Her macarons sell for $33 a dozen. While her customers gladly pay the cost to get a dozen of her delicate macarons weekly or monthly, Ward said she knows macarons are really a luxury item. If the economy begins to struggle, she said buying macarons would probably be one of the first things some people eliminate to save money.
"But I still daydream about having a little camper to sell my macarons from at special events," she said. "That would be nice. And really, I don't know if I would still love making them if I had to depend on them to make a living."
Jill Doss-Raines is the food and restaurant writer for the Times-News. She is always looking for tips about Alamance County's food scene. Contact me at jill.doss-raines@the-dispatch.com.
