A Parisian love Affair

I’ve found myself entangled in a Parisian love affair.  Every time we meet it’s the same… we spend hours upon hours together, I catch myself dreaming that one day we’ll be together in a corner café in Paris and my heart… my heart just lights up when seeing the beauty and perfection in front of me. 

Thus I openly admit:  Pastry, you are my one true love. 

It’s been a long time coming.  I was headed for a career in medicine when I was asked to make a croquembouche for a home economics class.  A tall tower, with hundreds of pastry baskets oozing with custard, dipped in chocolate, bejewelled with a few flowers and covered in a thin veil of angel-hair-sugar.  The beauty was astonishing.  A French hero had stolen my heart.

For a year the affair continued.  I was taught to make flaky pastry to blanket a homey pie, sucrée, sablé and brisée pastry.  Together our days were filled with frangipane and diplomat cream, covered in chocolate, icing sugar and sugar work.

I distinctly remember the day I made my first little fruit tartlet.  A crispy pastry filled with vanilla baker’s custard topped off with a ruffled skirt of fresh strawberries.  Simplicity, but that perfect little creation transported me to the glass window in the pastry shop along the streets of Paris.  For a brief moment I swear I could hear “la Vie en Rose” playing in my ears. 

The affair has been going on for four years now, but recently sparks were flying whilst making the most mesmerising pastry of all...

Puff pastry.  A forgotten art thanks to the “Today” frozen pastry.  Now the thing about Puff pastry is patience.  To make the perfect laminated pastry takes eight hours.  A process of incorporating butter with flour, turning, waiting and repeating.  But with each of the four roll out processes you incorporate a little bit of yourself with your hands.  You add a little bit more … love.

Once in the oven the show you’ve been preparing starts.  Slowly your butter melts, causing steam and soon the pastry is rising and the perfect golden crust is formed.  For some bizarre reason the hours spent making it is forgotten.  I, for one, am always left in awe of the beauty of simply flour and butter and love.  This is my reward for a day spent with my lover.

This is also the reason why my relationship with Pastry works.  Yes, I put in time and effort and love, but I am always, always rewarded.

My Parisian born lover and I will continue our love affair for years to come, because pastry is exactly that… love.

Lady Liezl