BY TERI R. WILLIAMS
PHOTOS BY RUTH ENGLISH & SHELBY MORRISON
Taste & see WHAT STARTED OUT AS A
CHALLENGE TURNED INTO
A THRIVING BUSINESS FOR SHELBY MORRISON AS HER FLAVORFUL, DELICATE MACARONS FIND THEIR WAY ONTO TABLES THROUGHOUT THE COUNTY.
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TO O M B S CO U N T Y M A G A Z I N E
a
merican cuisine is as diverse as the countries from which our ancestors originated. Even so, it’s doubtful hotdogs bring to mind German ancestors or doughnuts Dutch forebears. But whenever we see a macaron, we think French. Ironically, the word macaron is Italian, and for good reasons. The origin of the delicate cookie, much like the recipe itself, is complicated. It’s not the kind of dessert you could whip up on a whim. Shelby Morrison might never have tried her hand at macarons had it not been for Hadley Williams, who was eight years old at the time. When Shelby’s friend Candace shared that her young daughter had successfully baked a batch of macarons, Shelby took it as a challenge. She enjoyed trying new recipes. Her idea of fun was an afternoon rolling out thin layers of dough for a pan of baklava. Shelby would need all that experience as she set out to make her first batch of macarons. Everything to do with macarons was specific down to the most minute detail. Mixing, folding, whipping to a certain point, drying, resting, weighing ingredients to the gram. Overbaking or underbaking meant starting over from scratch. By her second attempt, Shelby’s macarons were a success. Such a success, in fact, that in the weeks surrounding Valentine’s Day (2022) she baked and sold over a thousand macarons. As a child, Shelby had always enjoyed baking. Whenever there was a school event, she always volunteered to make desserts. However, it was not a culinary school that she would attend after graduating from Vidalia High School in 2014. “It was natural for me to lean toward the medical field,” said Shelby. Her mother, Jeanie Allen, is a nurse practitioner at Cardiology Associates of Vidalia. Her sister, Chelsea Powell, is also a primary care nurse practitioner. That is not to suggest Shelby had followed the wrong career path. As a Registered Nurse (RN), she values
