After finishing my 2 weeks on the night shift, I had just one weekend to try to flip my sleeping schedule to accommodate a 7am start time. On the first Monday of my new post, after much tossing and turning and difficulty trying to sleep, I got up and headed off to the Champs-Elysees once again. It was strange walking into the kitchen bleary eyed and meeting with my coworkers of the past two weeks just as they were finishing work, and I was now just starting.
I've been meaning to write this post since I started my two week stint in the Decor department. In my mind as the two weeks progressed my idea for this post changed, and now I am glad I waited to write it. This is what Decor is: If you go to the Laduree website the first thing you see as the page loads is what looks like a Christmas tree that has flying macarons attaching themselves to it. When the animation finishes, it morphs into a photo of the famous Laduree Macaron pyramid. Decor is the dept at Laduree responsible for making these, The whole thing (except the macarons, more on that later). I remember my first day, just a few weeks ago, I walked past one of the smaller labs and caught a glimpse of one over 3 feet tall, covered in multitude of macarons, with a beautiful Etiquette made of White Chocolate place on it, and then another White Chocolate plaque with elegant looking writing saying "Catherine & Francois" and a date- it was going to be someone's wedding cake. I stared wide-eyed and wide mouthed for a minute. It was another one of those, oh my, I AM working at Laduree moments. Decor also makes several other Piece Montees (name for the large cake, macaron and cream puff creations) and as I was soon to find out, display pieces for the windows of the all the stores, including the ones outside of Paris.
If I hadn't known better, when I first started Decor, I would have thought I was being punished for bad behavior/performance. It seemed like the place were you would send employees who you didn't trust to touch the real pastries yet. I found the work tedious and boring from the start, but I was working with a staff of just 3 so, it was nice to be part of a small and much better organized group, then the seeming craziness of the larger kitchens.
My biggest problem with Decor, was really an issue with myself. On the first day I was handed a bag of Glace Royal (Royal icing) and instructed to take a styrofoam form and practice piping a border for the base of the pyramids. Ever wonder why you don't see elaborate hand-decorated cakes on my blog? Because its not my strong point, and I have little patience with myself when trying to do these things. I've never been good at playing video games, I can't draw a straight line to save my life, and if I were an artist, well my work would be of the abstract kind.
Decor quickly became my hell. Piping the border is one thing, but then after I had emptied a bag of icing and told maybe tomorrow I could actually pipe on a base that we would keep, I was given another bag with a smaller tip and then it got worse. Now I had to do stringwork. (this page
here will show you the items I was working on in decor). I had to pipe 3 little thing lines of icing,one at a time, letting them hang just so, and then attach them to the cake to look like a pretty little swag. AND they have to be evenly spaced. I wanted to cry. They wouldn't let me quit. I kept piping and wiping away the icing, and then doing it again. Then finally my punishment for one day was fulfilled and I was given other less intricate tasks to do.
In Decor communication was a little easier working with the same 2-3 people each day and I learned the routine very quickly. Going to the storage space to get the styrofoam cones and circles, making the Glace Royal, the process of covering the cones and circles quickly and then making sure the coating was not to thick and then setting them to dry. Finally on Thursday of my first week, I got to start making the macaron pyramids. On Friday when I arrived, I notice a familar set-up of two heat lamps over a silpat and a large pot boiling sugar syrup on a portable induction cook top. The head chef of the dept was going to do sugarwork.
I've mentioned before that I work with a lot of young men, practically boys to me. It is because most of them start working in the pastry field as apprentices at the young age of 14. Guilliame, the head chef of Decor, is only 18. On my first day of working with him, I found it odd that someone so young was in charge of a dept already and so serious. By later on in the week he had relaxed and stopped being so serious and started joking with me. When I watched him move quickly with the sugar and pull perfect sugar ribbons (which I cannot do), I started to understand why he was the chef. At the end of my two weeks I saw him complete all the decorating and the string work on a 6 tier wedding cake. It was practically flawless.
My sleep schedule finally adjusted back to nights and I started to enjoy getting out of work by 4pm and having a good amount of time afterwork to do stuff. My string work improved and by the end of my time in Decor I was allowed to pipe on the actual bases, but I still feel I need some work on it. I think my counting in French improved during these two weeks as well. I also learned a new word, "Factice" or artificial in English. In Decor we made many Factice display pieces that were used in the window displays at the store and sent to other stores as well. I made an entire pyramid of Factice pistachio macarons for a display. A week later I discovered it in the Printemps window display on Rue Lafayette.
Look closely behind my left shoulder
Factice macarons use the same meringue shell as the edible ones, but they are filled with Royal icing colored to make the normal filling so that they do not go bad. You could technically eat one, but I wouldn't recommend it.
I have now passed another two weeks with the Entremets morning team, and will be starting in Bandes tomorrow morning. Time is flying by. I'll be playing catch up on my blog here soon. Stay tuned!
