Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to another
Speaker 1: episode of Criminalia. This season, we're exploring the lives and
Speaker 1: motivations of some of the most notorious impostors throughout history.
Speaker 1: I'm Maria Tremarquis and I'm Holly Fry. And it seems
Speaker 1: that each season we have been having one contemporary or
Speaker 1: fairly contemporary person to talk about. For example, in our
Speaker 1: Stoker season we talked about George Harrison and his two Stalkers.
Speaker 1: But today our impostor is Frederic Bourdon. Frederic was born
Speaker 1: to Guillain Burdon on June four, so she was eighteen
Speaker 1: years old at the time, and she was living in
Speaker 1: monte Au dessin France, that is, a suburb of Paris.
Speaker 1: His father's identity was unknown. Elaine would later stay in
Speaker 1: a two thousand and eight interview with The New Worker
Speaker 1: that Frederic's father was actually an Algerian man named Casey.
Speaker 1: Now my name pronunciation isn't going to be nearly as
Speaker 1: delightful as Holly's, so just bear with me. One of
Speaker 1: us speaks French, one of us does not only enough
Speaker 1: to get into trouble only enough to make it sound great.
Speaker 1: So Gilan recalled that they had met at a factory,
Speaker 1: and if you're curious, that was a margarine factory. They
Speaker 1: both worked there at the time that she got pregnant.
Speaker 1: But after she found out she was pregnant, she learned
Speaker 1: that Casey was married, and because of that, she never
Speaker 1: told him about their son. As she got older, she
Speaker 1: could no longer remember Casey's last name, she stated. Gilane
Speaker 1: raised Frederic for about two years until child services intervened,
Speaker 1: and at that point he was placed with Elaine's parents.
Speaker 1: Relatives spoke out about this whole situation, saying, quote, she
Speaker 1: liked to drink and dance and stay out at night.
Speaker 1: She didn't want anything to do with that child. Years
Speaker 1: after he was removed from her home, Gilayne wrote her
Speaker 1: son a letter saying, quote, you are my son, and
Speaker 1: they stole you from me at the age of two.
Speaker 1: They did everything to separate us from each other, and
Speaker 1: we have become two strangers. Frederic later spoke of his
Speaker 1: mother's overwhelming need for attention, in particular his attention, describing
Speaker 1: how she would feign illness or a grave circumstance to
Speaker 1: get that attention. Guilaine, though she felt her son was
Speaker 1: overreacting about her need for this constant attention, did acknowledge
Speaker 1: that she had faked illness and had once attempted suicide,
Speaker 1: so he would be attentive to her. There are layers
Speaker 1: of messed upness in play already. He is. Frederic began
Speaker 1: impersonating people when he was still a kid. When he
Speaker 1: was just five years old, he moved with his grandparents
Speaker 1: to known He considered himself to kind of be the
Speaker 1: village outcast, and perhaps he was, and because of that,
Speaker 1: he began telling stories, fabricated stories about himself and about
Speaker 1: his family. For instance, he explained to his fellow children
Speaker 1: that his father was never around because he was actually
Speaker 1: according to Frederic, a British secret agents. One of his
Speaker 1: elementary school teachers described Frederic as quote a precocious and
Speaker 1: captivating child who had an extraordinary imagination and visual sense,
Speaker 1: drawing wild, beautiful comic strips. He further recalled he had
Speaker 1: this way of making you connect to him. This is
Speaker 1: a little bit of a difficult topic involving child abuse.
Speaker 1: So if that is something that you are not ready
Speaker 1: to hear about, hit mute for you. Know about thirty
Speaker 1: seconds or so or just skip ahead. Yes. So. When
Speaker 1: he was still quite young, Frederic confessed to his grandparents
Speaker 1: that he had been molested by a neighbor, but no
Speaker 1: one in the village seemed to believe the allegation, and
Speaker 1: neither his grandparents nor anyone else ever looked into the matter,
Speaker 1: and perhaps not coincidentally, this is when Frederic began misbehaving
Speaker 1: in school and stealing from the neighbors. Before long, he
Speaker 1: was sent to a juvenile home not too far away
Speaker 1: from his grandparents house, and at his new school, teachers
Speaker 1: referred to his stories as quote little dramas, and that
Speaker 1: they became more and more detailed as he made each
Speaker 1: one up. Throughout his childhood and into his adolescence, he
Speaker 1: often pretended that he was an amnesiac, intentionally getting lost
Speaker 1: in the streets to make it feel real. In sixteen
Speaker 1: year old Frederick hitch hike to Paris, where he invented
Speaker 1: and inhabited his first baked character. Pretending to be a
Speaker 1: British teenager named Jimmy Stale. He approached a police officer
Speaker 1: for directions, explaining he was lost as it appeared to
Speaker 1: be nothing out of the ordinary nothing came of it
Speaker 1: other than a big boost to his boldness. It is
Speaker 1: said Frederick has used forty identities, and if you ask him,
Speaker 1: possibly as many a five hundred. By the time he
Speaker 1: became an adult, the French press had nicknamed him Chameleon
Speaker 1: Monte or the chameleon from Some of his aliases were
Speaker 1: real people, but some were not. And we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about some of his big impersonations to really major scams,
Speaker 1: with a smattering of others along the way. Otherwise we
Speaker 1: would be here all day talking about those five hundred aliases.
Speaker 1: But of those many, here are a few. Alex Dole,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Kent, Michelangelo Martini, Jimmy morns are No Ourient, Giovanni Petrulo,
Speaker 1: and Sladyon Roskovich. And that is just a tiny sample
Speaker 1: of who he pretended to be. You'll notice he also
Speaker 1: switched nationalities a few times, picking names in different languages.
Speaker 1: He was apparently good at that as well. A police
Speaker 1: captain once noted quote, when he talked in Spanish, he
Speaker 1: became a Spaniard. When he talked in English, he was
Speaker 1: an Englishman. Of course, he lied, But what an actor.
Speaker 1: So this I'm starting with a quote people always say
Speaker 1: to me, why don't you become an actor, Frederick once
Speaker 1: said in an interview, which the police captain too agrees with.
Speaker 1: So Frederic goes on to say, I think I would
Speaker 1: be a very good actor like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to play somebody. I want to
Speaker 1: be somebody. He was always honest why he did what
Speaker 1: he did. He wanted attention, He craved it. He acknowledged
Speaker 1: what all pretenders know but don't often admit, and that
Speaker 1: is quote, it is not that hard to fool people.
Speaker 1: He thought of his career this way. Quote. I know
Speaker 1: it can be cruel, he said, of his methods, but
Speaker 1: I don't want to become a monster. Yeah. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of these stories we'll talk about that do,
Speaker 1: when you really look at them with the broad view,
Speaker 1: feel very cruel in a weird way. He transformed into
Speaker 1: his characters with specific details for each He would include
Speaker 1: things like what kind of soap they used, their heritage,
Speaker 1: and even things like whether or not they had a
Speaker 1: speech disorder or some sort of physical impairment. He was
Speaker 1: meticulous with each character's outward appearance. He would or would
Speaker 1: not have facial hair, he plucked his eyebrows. Anything that
Speaker 1: he could do, he did that would help bring that
Speaker 1: character to life. So he talked on about how he
Speaker 1: considered prepping a character to how he imagined a spy
Speaker 1: might do so, and that you change your superficial details
Speaker 1: to become that character, but you never change the core
Speaker 1: of who you are. So he once said, I don't
Speaker 1: want to make myself into somebody I'm not. The story
Speaker 1: is good enough without embellishment, and he continued, the worst
Speaker 1: thing you can do is deceive yourself. He went on
Speaker 1: to say, quote, the key is actually not lying about everything,
Speaker 1: otherwise you'll just mix things up. He claimed to live
Speaker 1: his life with inspirational quotes that helped him along with
Speaker 1: all of this, like keep it simple, and a good
Speaker 1: liar uses the truth. The one thing you better not forget,
Speaker 1: he advised, is your name. I've never actually seen the
Speaker 1: inspirational quote A good liar uses the truth. I've seen
Speaker 1: him or as a warning. Right, you know, not qualify
Speaker 1: it as an inspirational quote. Right, it's a good piece
Speaker 1: of information. Like, let's just leave it at that. For
Speaker 1: a person who described himself as a professional liar, one
Speaker 1: interviewer once said about Frederic, he seemed oddly fastidious about
Speaker 1: the facts of his own life. In order to try
Speaker 1: to bring his developed character to life in the real world,
Speaker 1: he did this thing that I have to concede is ingenious.
Speaker 1: He would first try to create the illusion among the
Speaker 1: local authorities that his character was real. That's smart. He
Speaker 1: would interact with police and thus create a record of
Speaker 1: this person. He would call, sometimes more than once, under
Speaker 1: different aliases, to report his character was in some sort
Speaker 1: of trouble. Nobody, he later explained, expects a seemingly vulnerable
Speaker 1: child to be lying. Still, characters can have flaws. So
Speaker 1: here we're going to take a break for a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsor, and by the time we're back, Frederic
Speaker 1: will probably have something like six hundred and fifty two
Speaker 1: new identities. We'll see, welcome back to criminally in Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Frederick's first big deception. By June, Frederick
Speaker 1: had pretended to be more than a dozen children and
Speaker 1: teenagers who were all imaginary. That June, as well, he
Speaker 1: also turned eighteen. Becoming an adult meant he could no
Speaker 1: longer stay in the places where he'd grown accustomed to staying.
Speaker 1: I've been in shelters and foster homes most of my life,
Speaker 1: and suddenly I was told that's it, You're free to go,
Speaker 1: has said in interviews. By the mid nineties, Frederic had
Speaker 1: a criminal record for crimes, including lying to police and
Speaker 1: other authorities. Interpol and others were looking for him. He was,
Speaker 1: unfortunately also getting media attention, which is never a good
Speaker 1: thing for an impostor. One of my favorite quotes that
Speaker 1: he has said so far is I'd rather leave on
Speaker 1: my own than be taken away, which is something he
Speaker 1: flatly stated in an interview. So we're gonna jump ahead
Speaker 1: a little bit to France in two thousand three, and
Speaker 1: at this point, Frederick assumed the identity of a fourteen
Speaker 1: year old French boy named Leo Balis, who had been
Speaker 1: missing since n When it was suspected that Frederic was
Speaker 1: not actually Leo, authorities tested his DNA, and of course
Speaker 1: that test proved that the authorities were right. Frederic was
Speaker 1: sentenced to four months in prison for stealing and using
Speaker 1: Leo Bali's identity. There was also a time in August
Speaker 1: of two thousand and four when Frederic was in Spain
Speaker 1: claiming to be a teenager named Reuben Sanchez Espinosa. Rubin's
Speaker 1: mother had been killed in the Madrid bomb attacks. And
Speaker 1: here we are the inevitable thing happened to Frederic. When
Speaker 1: the local authorities found out the truth, they deported him
Speaker 1: to France. So let's get into Frederick's first really big scam.
Speaker 1: On May three, two thousand five, multiple calls were placed
Speaker 1: to the authorities about a teenage boy alone in the
Speaker 1: local train station. That boy, who was Frederic in disguise,
Speaker 1: found his way to the local government child welfare office.
Speaker 1: The boy was described as slim and short, with pale skin.
Speaker 1: He wore a scarf wound around much of his face
Speaker 1: and a baseball cap that was pulled over his eyes.
Speaker 1: He had no money with him, but he did have
Speaker 1: a phone, and he did have identification. His name was
Speaker 1: Francisco Hernandez Fernandez, a fifteen year old from Spain. He
Speaker 1: was quiet, but he did say that his parents and
Speaker 1: younger brother had been killed than a car accident. He
Speaker 1: had been in a coma for several weeks. After he recovered,
Speaker 1: he had lived with an uncle, but when his uncle
Speaker 1: became abusive, Francisco left. He was then sent to live
Speaker 1: at a state run shelter that housed thirty five girls
Speaker 1: and boys, almost all of whom had been removed from
Speaker 1: their homes or abandoned by their parents. When he did speak,
Speaker 1: he spoke very softly, and he would flinch if anyone
Speaker 1: tried to touch him. The shelter he was at was
Speaker 1: described as an old stone building with peeling white wooden shutters.
Speaker 1: Kind of to set this scene, Francisco was given a
Speaker 1: single room. He was enrolled at the local secondary school,
Speaker 1: where there were about four hundred or so students, mostly
Speaker 1: from tough neighborhoods, and most of whom had a reputation
Speaker 1: for violence. Educators at the school would later say he
Speaker 1: looked like every other teenager who passed through the school,
Speaker 1: but that they felt protective of him. His literature teacher
Speaker 1: asked another student, Raphael Passoa, deal made up to help
Speaker 1: Francisco with his coursework, as he had enrolled mid term
Speaker 1: and he was trying to catch up. Quote this guy
Speaker 1: can learn like lightning, Raphael later recalled. Gradually, Francisco began
Speaker 1: hanging out with his classmates, and it didn't actually take
Speaker 1: very long before he was one of the most popular
Speaker 1: kids at his school. Quote The students loved him. He
Speaker 1: had this aura about him, this charisma. One of his
Speaker 1: teachers recall he knew a lot of American slang and idioms,
Speaker 1: and he seemed to have a deep knowledge of music,
Speaker 1: not just American music, just music. And he could dance
Speaker 1: just like Michael Jackson at a talent show. Quote. He
Speaker 1: didn't just look like Michael Jackson dancing. His music teacher recalled,
Speaker 1: he was Michael Jackson. About a month later, however, on
Speaker 1: June eight, a school administrator discovered who Francisco really was.
Speaker 1: She had been watching a TV show that happened to
Speaker 1: be about one of the world's most famous impostors, Frederic Bourdon,
Speaker 1: a thirty year old Frenchman who impersonated children and teenagers,
Speaker 1: and she immediately told the principal quote, I swear to god,
Speaker 1: Bourdon looks exactly like Francisco Hernandez Fernandez. So she also
Speaker 1: did a quick Internet search, and she was surprised at
Speaker 1: the amount of information about the possible impostor. The press
Speaker 1: called Frederick the King of impostors and described him as
Speaker 1: we quote, the master of new identities who didn't want
Speaker 1: to grow up. The press also claimed that Frederick had
Speaker 1: impersonated everything from a tiger tamer to a priest, and
Speaker 1: whether those two things are fact or fiction. There was
Speaker 1: no question that Frederick had pretended his way through many things.
Speaker 1: But we can see though through our research and reading
Speaker 1: so many of stories about him, is that he almost
Speaker 1: always played one character over and over that was an
Speaker 1: abused or abandoned child. So when all of this came
Speaker 1: to light, the school notified the lease, and when he
Speaker 1: was arrested, the incidentally balding fake teenager stated, in a
Speaker 1: much deeper voice than Francisco normally spoke, quote, I want
Speaker 1: a lawyer. He did admit to the police that he
Speaker 1: was actually Frederic Bourdon, and he admitted that over the
Speaker 1: past fifteen years he had invented scores of identity, many
Speaker 1: of whom were children or teenagers. His trail included, among
Speaker 1: other places, France, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden,
Speaker 1: and the United States. I was counting along, but I
Speaker 1: ran out of fingers. She had to go to toes.
Speaker 1: It became very awkward. Those countries. Wow, So we're going
Speaker 1: to take a break for a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: And when we're back, we'll talk about why Frederic ended
Speaker 1: up in the United States, in Texas and in San Antonio.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Criminalia. In just a minute, we're going
Speaker 1: to explain why it was the years and not the eyes.
Speaker 1: It's important. At this point in his career, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just Interpol watching Frederick. The U s State Department warned
Speaker 1: he was quote an exceedingly clever man who posed as
Speaker 1: exploited children and teenagers to garner sympathy, and in posing
Speaker 1: as those children, he had raised some flags with government offices.
Speaker 1: So at one point he had assumed the identity of
Speaker 1: a teenager and was staying at a youth house in Spain.
Speaker 1: And when he was exposed as a fraud, a child
Speaker 1: welfare judge was assigned to his case, and she correctly
Speaker 1: did not believe he was a teenager. She gave him
Speaker 1: twenty four hours to prove it, and if he couldn't,
Speaker 1: she warned him that she would collect and run his fingerprints.
Speaker 1: Those fingerprints were on file with Interpol because they, as
Speaker 1: we noted earlier, were watching him, so he couldn't risk
Speaker 1: it and there for he couldn't prove if he was
Speaker 1: or was not a teenager. Because of his criminal record,
Speaker 1: he was given a prison sentence. This here is the
Speaker 1: next big scam that we mentioned earlier. Here. Frederic chose
Speaker 1: to pretend to be a real person named Nicholas Barclay,
Speaker 1: who was a missing teenage boy from Texas. So with
Speaker 1: his new identity in place, he'd have to convince Nicholas's
Speaker 1: family as well as the local authorities, but he felt
Speaker 1: he could do it, and in an effort to pull
Speaker 1: this charade off, he started by calling the National Center
Speaker 1: for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Virginia. He had
Speaker 1: picked up some English over the years, which made things
Speaker 1: a little bit easier, and he said that his name
Speaker 1: was Jonathan Durian, the director of the Linares Shelter. He
Speaker 1: claimed that a boy who spoke English but would not
Speaker 1: say who he was, had arrived at the shelter, and
Speaker 1: he described the boy as having a prominent brown hair
Speaker 1: and eye and a gap between his teeth. That also
Speaker 1: was an exact match for Bourdon, and a woman at
Speaker 1: the center found a similar boy in the organization's database,
Speaker 1: and that description was a fairly close match to Nicholas Barclay.
Speaker 1: The actual story about Nicholas Barclay is that he was
Speaker 1: reported missing from his home near San Antonio, Texas. It
Speaker 1: was the summer of and Nicholas was thirteen. He'd been
Speaker 1: playing basketball with friends, but he never arrived back home afterwards. Nikki,
Speaker 1: as his family called him, was last seen, according to
Speaker 1: his National Center for Missing an exploited file, wearing we quote,
Speaker 1: a white T shirt, purple pants, black shoes, and he
Speaker 1: was carrying a pink backpack. So, because of the wheels
Speaker 1: set in motion by Frederic making that phone call to Virginia,
Speaker 1: eventually Nicholas's mother, Beverly was told that her son had
Speaker 1: been found, but not in Texas. He was in Spain,
Speaker 1: and that was, of course not Nikki. Just why this
Speaker 1: does seem incredibly cruel. It was Frederic who, then, as
Speaker 1: a consequence, traveled to San Antonio and actually lived with
Speaker 1: the Barclay family for about five months, which is amazing
Speaker 1: because Frederick had been in his twenties at the time
Speaker 1: and he didn't really resemble Nikki at all. So the
Speaker 1: first problem was that Frederick spoke with a thick French accent.
Speaker 1: The second problem was that he had brown eyes, which
Speaker 1: was actually a really big obstacle to overcome because Nikki
Speaker 1: had blue eyes. And the third problem was that Frederic
Speaker 1: had a tattoo on his forearm. Nikki was also tattooed,
Speaker 1: but none of his tattoos were on his forearm. There
Speaker 1: was a J on his left shoulder, a T on
Speaker 1: his left hand between his thumb and his index finger,
Speaker 1: and the letters L and N on his left ankle.
Speaker 1: But despite these facts, the Barclay family welcomed the impostor
Speaker 1: into their home as their son Nikki. So to explain
Speaker 1: that change in eye color, because you kind of have
Speaker 1: to have an answer for that, right, Frederic's explanation was
Speaker 1: that he again posting as Nikki, had been taken kidnapped
Speaker 1: essentially by a child sex trafficking ring, and that the
Speaker 1: traffickers were the ones who altered his eye color, and
Speaker 1: they did that before he managed to escape. But we
Speaker 1: were uncovering all sorts of things about him, stated a
Speaker 1: local private investigator who was working with a local TV
Speaker 1: news crew. All that noise about eye color, and it
Speaker 1: actually wasn't eye color that ended this impersonation. It was ears,
Speaker 1: as Holly mentioned earlier, When the private investigator compared a
Speaker 1: photo of Nikki with a photo of Frederick. He noted
Speaker 1: that the ears of the teenager and the man claiming
Speaker 1: to be that teenager didn't match. So, just in case
Speaker 1: you think that the Barclay family was so completely blinded
Speaker 1: by their possible joel at having their child back with them,
Speaker 1: there were some red flags that they started to notice.
Speaker 1: They were not just completely bought into the illusion. When
Speaker 1: Nikki's mother, Beverly, drove the impostor Nikki by his old school,
Speaker 1: she became convinced it was not her son. She later
Speaker 1: told a private investigator quote, it's not him. He didn't
Speaker 1: recognize the school he went by, and that was how
Speaker 1: it all unraveled. The FBI was granted a court order
Speaker 1: to take Frederick's fingerprints and a sample of his DNA.
Speaker 1: They did not match Nicholas Barclay, but they were a
Speaker 1: perfect match for Nicki's impostor. Frederick pleaded guilty to passport
Speaker 1: fraud and perjury and his San Antonio Federal court. He
Speaker 1: was sentenced to six years in prison, which was more
Speaker 1: than twice as long as recommended by the sentencing guidelines,
Speaker 1: and after his release, he was deported to France. A
Speaker 1: French prosecutor called Frederick, we quote, an incredible illusionist whose
Speaker 1: perversity is matched only by his intelligence. That prosecutor went
Speaker 1: on to say, quote, in my twenty two years on
Speaker 1: the job, I've never seen a case like it. Usually
Speaker 1: people can for money. His profit seems to have been
Speaker 1: purely emotional. And Frederick kind of backed this up with
Speaker 1: his own statement because he always said, and we're quoting here,
Speaker 1: I am a manipulator. My job is to manipulate. And
Speaker 1: many of the accusations and cases against him, and this
Speaker 1: is interesting, authorities were never sure of the best punishment
Speaker 1: for his crimes. Psychiatrists would be brought in to evaluate him,
Speaker 1: and he was always determined sane. When one doctor was
Speaker 1: asked in court, is he a psychopath? He testified and
Speaker 1: we quote absolutely not. On August eight, two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: Frederic married a frenchwoman named Isabelle, and the couple reside
Speaker 1: still in France. They have five children together, and after
Speaker 1: the birth of his first child, Frederick was asked by
Speaker 1: the press if he had become a new person now
Speaker 1: that he was a father and a husband, and he replied, quote, no,
Speaker 1: this is who I am. And since getting married and
Speaker 1: having children, Frederic has said he would we quote never
Speaker 1: impersonate anyone again. His only goal, as he had always claimed,
Speaker 1: was to have a home where he quote could be love. Frederic,
Speaker 1: what a hard life, right, hard childhood? Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to balance the normal. I think reaction of outrage at
Speaker 1: the cruel nature of him pretending to be children that
Speaker 1: people had genuinely lost against like this is obviously someone
Speaker 1: hunting for something themselves that they did not feel like
Speaker 1: they ever had, right, And he always, through all the
Speaker 1: research that I saw, always maintained he just wanted a
Speaker 1: home and he just wanted to be loved since he
Speaker 1: was a kid. That was what he said, and as
Speaker 1: we watch his story unfold, I completely believe him. So
Speaker 1: with his story, said Holly, I hear the mock tail
Speaker 1: this week has a baked good in it. It does.
Speaker 1: And it was partially because I wanted to do something
Speaker 1: that was a little bit more fun, because this is
Speaker 1: a little bit of a heavier story in some ways,
Speaker 1: and because we talked so much about, you know, him
Speaker 1: wanting to be a kid, I thought I would come
Speaker 1: up with something that has a that hearkens back a
Speaker 1: little bit to childhood. But also I wanted to, you know,
Speaker 1: think about his specific story, which of course made me
Speaker 1: think of French things, which are delicious. Many French things are,
Speaker 1: And so I came up. This is actually a milkshake
Speaker 1: this week, and it's called like a Kid Again. It's
Speaker 1: simple to make. There's one ingredient that can be a
Speaker 1: pain in the neck, and I will tell you my saga.
Speaker 1: So it's very very simple. Uh, you're gonna want to
Speaker 1: blender for this one. So you're gonna put in that
Speaker 1: blender two thirds of a cup of vanilla ice cream,
Speaker 1: just a plain one, a score of caramel syrup, a
Speaker 1: pinch of sea salt, and then I use a quarter
Speaker 1: cup of milk, and I used oat milk, And you
Speaker 1: add about half of it and start blending. And when
Speaker 1: it gets to the consistency you like, like, you just
Speaker 1: keep adding a little bit of time until you get there.
Speaker 1: I like mine, in this instance a little thinner than
Speaker 1: I normally would want a milkshake because I want to
Speaker 1: sip it through a straw, and because you're about to
Speaker 1: add something that's going to thicken it up anyway. So
Speaker 1: once you have that to a consistency you like, you're
Speaker 1: gonna throw in two salted caramel macaron. Now you didn't
Speaker 1: mention the flavor. Oh yeah, you're gonna do these at
Speaker 1: the end, m because you only want to put them
Speaker 1: in the blender for just a brief period of time.
Speaker 1: You just want to break them up into little bits,
Speaker 1: but not pulverize them, so that as you're you're having
Speaker 1: your milkshake, you're getting some yummy crunchy on the outside,
Speaker 1: chewy on the inside bits of macaron and some of
Speaker 1: that yummy filling which uh, you know was a caramel
Speaker 1: butter cream in my case, with a little bit of
Speaker 1: sea salt in it. Oh my god, stop, it's so delicious.
Speaker 1: And then you're gonna garnish this with a drizzle of
Speaker 1: caramel if you want, and I actually recommend just a
Speaker 1: little sprinkling of flaked sea salt on top, which just
Speaker 1: makes it super yummy. And if you want to go
Speaker 1: really hog wild, you can also garnish it, you know,
Speaker 1: with a third maca at all. But that's a lot
Speaker 1: of it's a lot of bakery and ice cream time
Speaker 1: at that point. I mean, this is a smallish milkshake
Speaker 1: and it still was very very filling. So does it
Speaker 1: stay crunchy in the in the milkshake. Um no, I
Speaker 1: mean it also depends on how how quick you consume
Speaker 1: it immediately. It doesn't stay super crunchy for me, and
Speaker 1: I found um, particularly once I added alcohol to it,
Speaker 1: the macat on stuff tended to float on the top
Speaker 1: of it and it got quite soft. But it was delicious, delicious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to make this an adult drink, and
Speaker 1: if you do consume alcohol, I recommend try and this
Speaker 1: because wow, was it delicious. I just I just put
Speaker 1: in an ounce of conak and let me tell you,
Speaker 1: did it take it to a new level? It did
Speaker 1: well because something interesting happened. I hadn't really thought about
Speaker 1: it interplaying in this way, but it's like the konak
Speaker 1: really heightened that juxtaposition between the sweetness and the salt
Speaker 1: in it, and it was just like I felt like
Speaker 1: Remi and Ratatui because I was like, look at how
Speaker 1: the flavors interact. I was very excited and actually I
Speaker 1: can see this happening in your kitchen, Sime, like running
Speaker 1: around excitedly and thinking like, gosh, I should eat some
Speaker 1: protein to counteract all the sugar. Think you're like like
Speaker 1: in an hour and then you never get to it. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was super duper yummy. Here's what I will
Speaker 1: tell you is that think ahead, maybe call ahead before
Speaker 1: you go looking for your salted caramel mac at all,
Speaker 1: because maybe your bakery doesn't have them that day. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't know this from experience. I may have had to
Speaker 1: throw together some macadon very quickly and in a great
Speaker 1: bit of irony. Macanon, as you know, very complex to
Speaker 1: make a lot of steps. They're not hard, but they're tricky,
Speaker 1: and there's just a lot of doing and sifting and
Speaker 1: careful measuring. And this was my sloppiest batch ever and
Speaker 1: they came out more beautiful than any other macadon I
Speaker 1: have ever made in my life. So now you know
Speaker 1: how to make them in the future, which is to
Speaker 1: pay no attention and only, like you know, halfheartedly think
Speaker 1: about measurements and apparently the magic will happen. Um Here,
Speaker 1: I've been slaving over really trying to be very careful
Speaker 1: all the time. I will say if you if you
Speaker 1: want to try your hand at maccadon, they are sort
Speaker 1: of notoriously finicky, and you'll often see people be like
Speaker 1: I tried and failed, and it's very depressing because you
Speaker 1: put in so much work. Usually even if they're hideous,
Speaker 1: they're delicious. But the best recipe I have found ever,
Speaker 1: the one that almost always turns out really really nicely
Speaker 1: for me, even if it's not perfect, is the one
Speaker 1: from Binging with Babbish. That is the best mac recipe.
Speaker 1: So look that one up. That was one that came
Speaker 1: out in December of because he was doing it because
Speaker 1: Macana has showed up on the Mandalorian. But it is
Speaker 1: absolutely my most successful repeated Macana recipe. That's great, Thanks
Speaker 1: for sharing that. Try that if you want to try
Speaker 1: baking them, and just know they may not come out
Speaker 1: and that's okay. They'll probably still be delicious. And if
Speaker 1: if you're doing it for this you're gonna throw them
Speaker 1: with the blunder anyway, it's fine, exactly. You're just crushing
Speaker 1: him up. They're doomed to be broken apart in any case.
Speaker 1: So if they don't, if they're little ps the feet
Speaker 1: on the bottom don't pop up properly, or if they
Speaker 1: you know, aren't quite right in the dome shape, or
Speaker 1: if they stick to the the mat a little bit.
Speaker 1: When they come up, they're supposed to come up clean.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you leave behind like a little chunk of
Speaker 1: cookie and that's not great. But again, it's going in
Speaker 1: the blender. It's fine. Tell everybody they looked perfect when
Speaker 1: before you did. That's fine. That is my baking experience
Speaker 1: in play. Little did you know this is going to
Speaker 1: be a long baking segment. Uh, but thank you. I
Speaker 1: hope if anybody tries this one tagged me on Twitter
Speaker 1: because I want to see here your maccao and your
Speaker 1: your milkshakes. Yes, please tag us. I hope that you
Speaker 1: absolutely love it, and I hope that you have enjoyed
Speaker 1: spending this time with us this week, despite this being
Speaker 1: a little bit of a downer in some ways, which
Speaker 1: I hope our sweet treat at the end helped mitigate
Speaker 1: just a little bit. But we will be back here
Speaker 1: again next week with another impostor and another hopefully delicious libation.
Speaker 1: Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership
Speaker 1: with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio,
Speaker 1: please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you send to your favorite shows.