One afternoon during clean-up at school, Isidro, my Spanish classmate, sang…

“Bye, bye, meeze amar-eee-can bye”
“It’s not American Bye. It’s American Pie.” I chuckled.
You can probably imagine the questions that followed.
”I don’t know… American pie symbolized…perhaps a quintessential American icon?”
According to Isidro, the song was written for Buddy Holly, so it fit. He seems very pie.

Isidro, reluctantly allowing me to take a profile of him and his virgining mohawk

When it comes to human-dessert parallels, I’m with Don McLean. Pastries are like a social cross-section! You’ve got the entremets who dazzle on the outside but most skip when it comes to the actual eating since the drama isn’t worth the cost or calories. There are the unwavering, devoted croissants who have a soft spot in everyone’s stomach. One can’t have a pastry shop without them since they are the everyday workhorses that makes “the trendy” ones possible. Some are just tarts. (sorry, I had to) And that brings us to the “acquired taste”.  You either love or hate it, no in-between, like cilantro, matcha, durian and my personal favorite, chestnut.

When I was a kid, every birthday, wedding and gathering of 10 or more included whipped cream layer cake with canned fruit in the centre. The ones you get from Chinese bakeries made of fluffy, generic white cake. The most exciting it ever got was when the “canned fruit gods” shone on you, and like a little red jewel, the flaccid maraschino cherry happened to be snuggled into your slice. We rarely got sweets as children so I anticipated these cakes with immense fervor. On rare occasions, after waiting an entire evening, my sister and I would be devastated to find that some gastronomical moron had replaced our coveted cake with chestnut cake! The same pallid cake but brown, gritty chestnut purée replaced the canned fruit. We hated this cake and I hated it more out of spitefulness. One day, my craving for sweets broke me and I ate some – the first bite, not as horrible as I’d imagined. The second was not “just edible” but in fact tasty.  The last bites made a believer out of me.

And Paris is a chestnut town with almost every street lined with chestnut trees and spiky fruit scattered all over the pavement. Vendors at every corner selling roasted chestnuts with brittle, smoky shells.

Chestnut trees by Sainte Chapelle

Here, chestnut jam is as common as strawberry. And whole window displays are set up in honor of glacéed chestnuts, each with a lacquered finish and adorned with a glittering flake of gold leaf. Glaceéd chestnuts are sweet, smooth, creamy, unctuous, earthy and – dare I say – meaty. My teacher mentioned that glacéed chestnuts involve so much labor most don’t make it themselves. Each batch of chestnuts has to be hand-peeled of their hard husks, then of their inner fibrous coat. Afterwards, they must be soaked in syrup for at least 65 days, replenishing the liquid every few days until all the water has sufficiently evaporated.

Sorry, I didn't have time to take a photo of a display but I wanted to show you nonetheless!

Until I got to Paris, I wanted to be a brownie: non-offensive, generally impressive but still edible even when mediocre, and pleasing to everyone. (Except the few weirdos that don’t like chocolate at all. You know who you are…and you are guilty of said crime.)

But it recently dawned on me, not without a little resistance, that I’m more like a chestnut. I’m a bit of a late bloomer, and deep down inside, I don’t think I’m for everyone. I also look a little rough around the edges first thing in the morning, but after a good 65 days of priming, I clean up pretty nice.

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Below is our presentation for tea cakes and “traveling cakes”.  Coming later this week, plated desserts for restaurants!