Unique Sweets

Tags

baking, pastry, postaday2013, T.v, talent, work

My hubby and I are watching the show Unique Sweets on the Cooking Channel. It’s a dangerous show to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon, everything that they are describing is making my hubby salivate. All this show is doing for me, is calling my inner patissiere or baker to get out into the kitchen and make something like croissants or pain aux raisins or an apple galette. Trust me,when I say that I don’t have the skill set or the true talent to go into business making beautiful pastries for public consumption. My stuff tastes good, I might even go as far as very good at times, but I never get the aesthetic part right.

The show was highlighting breakfast pastries and there were three places that rated their mention. On the West Coast there was Knead Bakery, there was also Levain Bakery and there was a third called Sonoma Bakery. All three had original pastries. There was a breakfast apple pissette; essentially a thin crust apple pizza which looked mouth wateringly delicious. Another amazing breakfast pastry offering was the palme d’or which is a puff pastry shell filled with soft caramel sprinkled with sea salt topped with a vanilla pastry cream and sprinkled on top with a generous dusting of sugar that the pastry chef puts a blow torch to creating a hard carmel topping to the pastry. It was a masterpiece. The other pastry that was truly note worthy was a whole wheat dinner roll that once out of the oven was split open and stuffed with slivers of excellent European chocolate and closed back together. After purchasing, you saw the customers open their whole wheat rolls and see this luscious molten chocolate emerge, I have personal experience with this type of treat. When I was a child in France, my sister, my cousin and I at 4:00 p.m, would take 4 inch pieces of French baguettes and insert pieces of chocolate in the interior and eat them for a snack. French crusty baguettes make an excellent foil for good quality chocolate.

My love of baking is really the love and desire to put smiles on everyone’s faces. Whenever I make something by hand, it makes me so happy to see my family close their eyes, flair their nostrils and lick their lips in delight. It truly is all about the love. That would be the only reason for baking in a professional capacity, to spread the love and goodness that is all about patisserie.

Don’t ask me that, please!

What is one question you hate to be asked?

I hate when people ask me what I do. I am always prone to answer, nothing. My answer isn't really true, but it is in the way most people mean when they ask that question "what is it that you do". What do you do during the week that entitles you to a paycheck and therefore my answer is nothing. I don't get paid by an outside employer, I firmly believe that being a stay at home person is something that is met with a certain amount of preconceived notions and those notions aren't positive.

I see it because unfortunately, economically times have changed to such an extent that a family for the most part can no longer survive on one paycheck and therefore there isn't a real choice for the other person to stay at home with the children. Moreover, many women have had the chance to build a career before having children and that is a difficult choice to take time away from a career that you love and spent time and energy nurturing, to have children and find that same amount of time, you have the capacity for infinite love and passion but no one has infinite time and something has to give and it isn't fair.

I have at last found something beyond the children that has ignited my passion and interests, writing and I am so very lucky that my hubby supports me in my endeavor to make something out of my passion for writing. I am also so very lucky to have had the opportunity to be there for my children during their childhood so that I could be here for them after school and for all of the school activities and after school activities. I know that I have been and I still am so very blessed. I just hate the looks of dismissal that I get at times when I say that I am a stay at home person who writes on the internet and no I don't have anything published but I am working on it. Those looks seem to reduce everything to monetary value where I have found writing to be of such emotional and mental value that far outweighs any monetary compensation I could receive.