To think they're macarons not macaroons.

[PikachuSayBoo]

Macarons are the pink/green/brown/yellow sugary biscuits.

Patisserie Valarie and now marks and Spencer's label them as macaroons.

Which I thought were coconutty biscuits and totally different?

I thought they were totally different too!

Ive just googled and they are different. I was beginning to doubt myself.

Macarons

Yes, you are right op. It irritates me.

Once one of the lads on Gogglebox correctly called them macarons and his Mum told him he was wrong. It was enough to nearly tweet him.

"Macaroon" is just the anglicised version of "macaron".

In my opinion:

Coconut macaroons = coconutty biscuit/cake things

Macaroons = the sugary biscuits. They are called "macarons" in French but not all the macaroons/macarons we eat are French (a lot are Swiss I think, so you could equally argue that they should be Luxemburgerli which is the Swiss German word iirc)

You are definitely right. You are reminding me of the sexy Michel Roux talking about Macaron.

I thought macaron was French for sweet chestnut?

They're brilliant this year btw. I've already picked up a carrier bag full.

Yep they are different and it bugs me too. As an aside I brought loads back from Paris this year and they were sooooo nice.

I think it is Marron for chestnuts. They are awful.

Yes marrons glacé is French for the candied sweet chestnuts.

This is like 'tea' and 'chai'. 'Chai' literally means tea. But in the uk chai is used to refer to 'indian style' tea (ie with spices) to differentiate it from the kind of tea we are more used to.

Macaron is literally just the French way of saying macaroon. But in uk macaron came to mean 'the French style of macaroon' as opposed to the sort that was previously more well known in this country that had coconut added.

It's a marketing thing I suspect. i.e. when people wanted to sell 'French style' macaroons to the UK, they knew people would find the name confusing because they would be expecting coconut, so they marketed them as 'macarons' instead (and French is chic, so totally justifies making them expensive...). Now the non-coconut variety are more common than the added coconut sort, so some companies have decided just to use the proper English name for them (speculating here, but possibly because things being european is seen as less of a plus point at the moment?).