Tout De Sweet's Complex Macarons | Bethesda, Washington D.C.

It takes only four primary ingredients to create the delicate, crisp and complex-tasting macaron.

At the new Tout de Sweet bakery in Bethesda, chef Jerome Colin has mastered those ingredients' interrelation, mixing egg whites, almond flour and confectioners' sugar to create the base for his three-bite confections. Then for the fourth element, Colin adds one of a variety of special flavorings.

Cocoa powder flavors the dark chocolate offering, with its thick, ganache center. The ruby-colored raspberry macaron is sometimes a raspberry buttercream, and sometimes a sweet raspberry jam filling.

Colin reduces sugared coffee to thick, bitter syrup to flavor his coffee macaron, and to flavor the coffee buttercream. The result is a sweet, but powerful jolt of espresso flavors.

Flavors–which rotate daily–regularly deviate from the expected. Coconut macarons refer not to a haystack of chocolate-covered coconut, but to a tropical cookie flavored with shredded and pureed coconut. Chopped sweet basil perfumes the snappy basil-lime, which is filled with a tart lime curd.

Macarons come out around noon, but if you arrive earlier, snag a warm, almond croissant ($2.35), which is covered in toasted nuts and filled with a buttery, nearly caramelized frangipane.

Tout de Sweet Bakery, 7831 Woodmont Ave., Bethesda; 301-951-0474 or toutdesweetshop.com