Bonjooouur a tout le mondeee! Ça va? Ya girl is back, trying to get more consistent with writing these updates because a) it’s so much fun b) I need to remember how to read/write while I’m not in school and c) the time is going sooo fast it’s all a blur I only have 3 months left AHHHH. But for today, let me take you on a journey… back to a time not so long ago… early March, final Intermediate Pastry exam, writing my first ever recipe.
How to channel your inner Ina [Garten]
In this letter, I want to explore the steps in writing a recipe, as told by someone who did not, does not, and will never [read: hopefully someday] have any idea what in the hell they are doing.
The Genesis
The light bulb moment, an epiphany of sorts.
Not going off of the assumption that y’all imprint every single word I write in these letters into a little file cabinet in your brains, but I looked to my subscriber community for some inspiration in this tart creation process a couple of newsletters back. What do y’all like to eat? What makes a good tart? Even though I am living in quite literally the pastry capital of the world, I found myself lacking inspiration and drawing a blank. It gave rise to an even bigger question in my mind: how are creatives (not that I would venture to call myself one) finding their inspiration these days?
My Austrian hairdresser at a swanky 1st arr. Parisian beauty parlor brought up this very same point as he carved his way through my unruly hair. Between the restrictions of a curfew, the boarded-up cafés and clubs, as well as a general worldly uneasiness, he had turned to the little joys that could not be taken away from him (i.e. his dog and social media).
At this time (early March that is) in Paris, bars and brasseries were still offering takeaway cocktails, causing conglomerates of young Parisienne professionals to flock to areas like Rue de Buci and little popups along the Seine for an afternoon aperitif. As an avid people-watcher (and just generally showing more interest in other people’s lives rather than my own), I found great joy in creepily watching these groups. Even in a language I don’t know, I could still recognize the exchanging of gossip or the deep belly laughs from an absurd story - almost always accompanied by an Aperol Spritz.
Between this and an upcoming spring break trip to Italy (that got nixed just before Easter), the Aperol Spritz tart was born. It’s funny, different, and gives hope for a time of enjoyment with friends not too far away. They also taste amazing (IMO).
The Logistics
And from that day on, the world of French patisserie as we know it was changed forever…
Not exactly. I am the type of person that once I find an idea and fixate on it, I become obsessed with the story of it. The aesthetics. The origin. That’s why, when compiling my official Tart Dossier (essentially a middle school presentation of our tart recipe in PDF format 12 point font), I went absolutely ham writing this intricate and heartfelt Sales Pitch and Origin Story of my tart creation (not too far off from what I wrote above). As for the recipe part… well in that… I wasn’t able to skate by as well on my love for writing and highly-trained ability to BS.
First things first. How do I make this thing taste like an Aperol Spritz? My mind went to bubbles, citrus, airy, orange, vanilla. Okay cool, let me check the handy dandy ingredient list as provided by the school! Oh… no oranges. No Prosecco either (lol, guess this would have been a big ask). But wait! We are permitted to bring one ingredient of our choosing from the outside world into our tart creation. Shocker, that ingredient would nonetheless have to be our dear Italian Aperol (thank you European drinking laws).
The plan was simple.
Start with a basic sweet pastry crust (boring snooze yawn)
Topped with a creamy vanilla filling to play up the accents of vanilla flavor in Aperol (learned that one from Google)
Finished by the shining star of the performance - the Aperol chiboust dome-shaped “glass” - with a thin layer of orange zest sponge at the bottom.
Easy peasy orange squeezy.
Up to this point in the diploma, I had built a strong repertoire of surefire French fan favorites: a Savoie, a chiboust, a crémeux. This made the recipe writing part a practice of digging through old pastry notes and reliving the experiences (which I clearly love doing **cough cough** this newsletter).
In this way, most of the class’s tarts would follow a similar formula of creams, doughs, and mousses. The real deviation - and room for creativity - came with the decoration. For those who don’t know, an Aperol Spritz is usually adorned with a glistening slice of orange to squeeze in, eat, or just sit on the rim and look pretty. My initial reaction, then, was to decorate my tart with candied orange peels (or just somehow find a way to make an orange look boujee?). 2 problems. First, I was not provided with massive, succulent oranges, but instead clementines. Cuties, if you will. Seeds intact. Problem number two, the only limitation of our decoration was under no circumstance, once so ever, even if it looks like the freakin’ bee’s knees, serve a chef something inedible on the tart. To my dismay, an “orange peel,” even if candied, counted as inedible.
The mango coulis “orange twist,” born out of desperation and blind dedication to my theme, was a mistake from day one. Riffing off of a technique with tempered chocolate we had used to decorate the Gateau Voyage, I aimed to freeze a tray of mango coulis ("jelly,” mango being the closest thing to orange we had), cut it into segments, and magically twist it into a flawless helix shape to adorn the edge of my tart. As you will see, this did not go as planned. But at least we had the trial run!
The Trial Run
The night before our mock exam, I felt more excited than nervous. I was a pioneer, getting the opportunity to finally bring my brainchild to life. Bottle of Aperol in one hand, whisk in the other, I was ready to conquer my doubts, get down to business, and do this thing.
About halfway into the 5-hour practical, this optimistic outlook was annihilated. I had tapped into my flow state, completing the dough, the sponge, and the creamy with impeccable form and immense grace. Now onto the Aperol chiboust. Quickly, I glance over to my neighboring station - just curious to see what everybody else is up to. TERRIBLE MISTAKE!! Nothing is more demoralizing than thinking you are going at lightning speed only to see everybody else around you already on their decoration.
Not only that, but I then noticed the cook next to me meddling with some kind of white cream over a bain-marie, adding granulated sugar… hold on… that’s MY white cream!!! My vanilla creamy!!! The HOW THE HELL DID THIS HAPPEN came out of my mouth as a soft “oh no… is that my creamy?” followed by a confused and defensive look, then a realization, and a limp apology. (Crémeux translates to “creamy” in English and I hate it.) These things happen. But, as I’ve learned, much of being in the class is a mental game, and the creamy-catastrophe was enough to send me spiraling into self-doubt and incompetence.
The remainder of the time was spent flailing about the kitchen, recruiting my buddy to help me weigh out ingredients for my crémeux-take-2 while I hastily threw together the remainder of my components. I had originally allocated enough time to tinker with the coulis twist for an artistic and thought-provoking decoration but just ended up slapping on jagged cuts of half-frozen coulis into a pathetic-looking flower (?). Now came for the tasting…
While many of my classmates had spent the weekends leading up to this testing and tweaking their recipes for perfect taste and layered harmony, I had just shrugged and said “well Aperol Spritzs’ taste good, so what could go wrong?” In my own denial, I had even refused to taste the components of my tart while baking them in the practice that day, brushing off the pungent fumes of hard alcohol wafting through the kitchen as I baked. “Ahhh, bon weekend?” Chef remarked as he passed my station, about to be the first human to ever try my absurd, loose interpretation of “French pastry.”
Everybody was tweaking, even those who had been eating some iteration of their tart since their grandmother baked it for them as a child. While in line, people exchanged “awww so cute”s or “wow, amazing!”s while I received… silent looks of bemusement, horror, and a little bit of pity. It finally got to my turn, I looked down at what I was presenting, and felt ashamed. As he lifted his fork and lowered his mask, I gave myself the classic consolations of “you tried your best!” and “good effort!”. GASP, as it entered his mouth he quickly turned away and darted towards the trash. Oh my god he’s spitting it out, is he actually spitting it out? I’ve poisoned the chef, thiiiississsaaadeeesaaassterrr! Just as quickly, he turns back to me, eyes glistening, and smiles (through the mask). “It’s good.”
I WAS ELATED!!! It looked like garbagio but tasted “GOOD” by the standards of a FRENCH PATISSERIE CHEF. Even with the bumps in the road, I had got it done and created a half-decent recipe all by myself. With a couple of decor tweaks for the final and no creamy disaster, I’d be GOLDEN. Or so I thought.
The Big Day
Revisions are an essential part of writing a recipe. Cooking (and baking especially) is experimentation, and you are never going to nail it the first time.
Before our final exam, we were allowed to tweak our ~tart dossier~ to reflect any changes we wanted to make after the trial run. Now, if this wasn’t a timed exercise, and I had all of the time in the world to lallygag and listen to the birds chirp outside my window while waiting for the chiboust dome to set, oh the things I could DO with this tart recipe.
In the same grain, the sheer amount of equipment, ingredients (don’t know about y’all, but I don’t have any Pectin NH or fish gelatin lying around my at-home pantry), and guidance we have at the school makes up for feeling like you’re a contestant on Top Chef with all of the time constraints. But, as I said before, I am someone that easily gets carried away by the idea and the ~moment~, completely disregarding the reality. I didn’t know how to do any of this a couple of months ago. I am in fact not a middle-aged veteran of the industry. My practice run didn’t go that great considering we would have even less time in the final exam itself.
The thing with the dossier was that whatever tart we ended up producing on exam day had to be a mirror image of what we presented in our diagram. And somehow, I ended up making my tart composure 8 times more complicated than it was the first time.
My creamy became a vanilla orange crémeux (not to be mistaken with any other white concoctions this time around). A vanilla orange chantilly cream was introduced to cover the sides in a design I had yet to think of (kept it broad enough with the squiggles). The cocktail glass dome became a flat-top (easier to fill, I went easy on myself with that one). To bring some freshness to the taste, I added an orange compote aka segmented Cuties doused in sugar syrup and crushed on the bottom of my tart shell. And finally, the “coulis design,” yet another decorative element I had yet to pinpoint.
Ever since reading my first Joan Didion book over quarantine, I have been absolutely infatuated with the 1970’s hippie California vibe. So, just when this tart concept couldn’t get any wackier, I decided to go for a groovy “Scooby-Doo mystery van-esque” flower design with the coulis. Unfazed by the first unsuccessful coulis attempt and the glaring reality that nobody had ever even tried to do a coulis decoration before, I once again was sold on the dream, blindly confident in my recipe and the boozy vibey baby I had conceptualized.
I’m great at thinking, but am I good at doing?
I think I blacked out the whole time I was in the final exam. I’m being dramatic of course. But, despite formulating a detailed gameplan of what I was going to do in the order I would do it (so… a recipe?), waking up a tad bit earlier than 6:05AM to iron and press my newly washed uniform, even practicing segmenting the bag of Cuties from the grocery store (under my Cuisine student roommate’s supervision), when it came down to it, there were still some things I couldn’t do.
My chiboust was lumpy, so I decided to re-do it in the moment - killing a good chunk of time. I forgot to put marscapone in my chantilly cream - the firming agent - resulting in a melty, lifeless mess dripping down the sides of my shell. Having taken my coulis pan out of the blast chiller too early, I was unable to cut any shape out of the orange goop which had coagulated onto the tray - missing my shot to be the Chloe Bouquet, pioneer of the coulis cutout technique.
I wanted to end Intermediate on a high note. I’m a try-hard and a perfectionist and hate failing (doesn’t everybody). As soon as the time was called, I wanted to leave immediately. I couldn’t bear to watch as two of my Korean classmates wiped the drops of Chantilly off of the sides of my tart as we waited in for the chefs to come in and grade. What I considered in the moment as a great failure, my tart now fills me with pride and admiration. I had completed a WHOLE RECIPE all by myself, from start to finish. So yes, of course there were things I faltered a little on, and yes maybe they were a little more glaring to the human eye than the mistakes of my classmates.
Please forgive me for sounding too hokey by finishing this whole recipe-writing epic with a fitting and heartfelt moral of the story. But… baking quite literally survives and thrives off of the failures. No great recipe today would be nearly as good without utter catasrophes, the genesis of many famous foods being out of one-off mistakes and freak accidents. In the end, I did what every chef must do. Created a product out of heart and sentiment, learned from my mistakes, took risks, embraced (?) the inevitability of failure.
Directly after the exam, I found the nearest brasserie, and finally got my Aperol Spritz with friends - laughing through my straw as I told the absurd story of the Aperol Spritz Tart Saga.
If you made it through this whole email, THANK U!!! Don’t forget to subscribe/tell friends, and if you liked this recipe-writing experience, don’t worry… I am already submitting the ~dossier~ for my final entremet creation… MORE TO COME!
xoxo,
Chloé