We Asked the Baker of Coronavirus Macarons: Why?

She baked her first macaron in January 2019 and in just over a year, has gone from a novice to a bona fide artist. Meet Kim-Delia Keller, a Swiss home baker who creates impressively ornate and strikingly pertinent macarons. She’s now viral as people around the world spend more time in the kitchen during quarantine.

“I get my inspiration from daily life. I don’t search for it,” Kim-Delia told VICE. “I only bake stuff when I have an idea, and time and energy to realise it.”

In the time of COVID-19, this means baking macarons adorned with toilet paper fondant and spiky balls of the microscopic coronavirus.

“The toilet paper macaron was about the coronavirus situation. I saw so many TP cakes and thought, ‘Why not in a macaron?’”

"I made the coronavirus macaron because I saw a picture of how the virus looked like and had this image in my head of a macaron filled with them. I really don't know why, since nobody wants to eat a virus, but I had to try this. I regretted as soon as I made it," Kim-Delia said. "Some people said that I think this virus is funny, but that was never my intention! I posted it on Instagram, but I wrote in every post that I am not making fun or the virus."

"Oh, and I destroyed the macaron after posting it, to show that I want to destroy the virus and don't think it's funny or anything," she continued.

Pop culture-inspired macarons are her latest obsession. This Money Heist macaron, inspired by the Spanish show on Netflix, is lined with Salvador Dali masks in red hoods, just like the show’s anti-heroes.

“I made the Money Heist-themed macaron because I’m a very big fan of the series! I love everything about it. I’ve never tried modelling people’s faces — it’s so hard to make a fondant look like a real person! Every mask in the series looks the same, so I took the easier way of modelling the masks,” Kim-Delia said.

Like almost everyone else, she is practising social distancing in her home in Switzerland.

“The situation now is a little bit better,” she said, “but the last few weeks weren’t funny at all. I wasn’t completely in quarantine, fortunately I can go to work. But after work, I just stay at home with my boyfriend.

Kim-Delia shares her creations on Instagram where she now has over 4,000 followers.

People are stuck at home and injecting creativity into their baking pursuits. Like this home baker in New Zealand who has been channeling her quarantine frustrations into Instagram-worthy pies.

When asked about her baking philosophy, Kim-Delia summed it up with a poetic and surprisingly relevant quote for quarantine times.

“It’s like Twyla Tharp says, ‘Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.’ I think baking is art, in every way.”

Find Koh Ewe on Instagram.