I don’t have a sweet tooth, that’s also why I don’t bake a lot… When I do so, I try to do it properly in sort of taking pictures and if they look good enough to add them on my website.

I tried last week a new recipe : ‘Grapefruit and pepper meringue tartlets’. I had just bought a torch and couldn’t wait for more to use it, so a different version of the ‘Tarte Citron meringuée’ was ideal.

My tartlets looked not great but ok, so I happily put my meringue on the top and ‘grilled’ them with my brand new torch. As I always need a different background for my photoshoot, I went to the coffee shop down the road.

Very proud of my tartlets I explained the owner what I was doing and showed her my tartlets saying as a joke that my job was to make them look sexy through the camera even though they didn’t look great. The very nice lady, a bit sorry for me offered to ‘lend me’ some of her cakes for my photoshoot ! Very nice but no, thank you.

A photoshoot is always long especially if the dish doesn’t look perfect. Great natural light, nice background and me strained to have the nice bricks wall behind without seeing the crooked part of the tartlet. After more than 100 pictures and still very offended I showed the nice lady my screen’s camera and she added : ‘Actually, it is nice, it looks better on the picture than in reality, well done’.

Definitely very offended I gave her my card, I wanted her to see my website with food cooked, styled and photographed by me!

As I always said, pastry is like chemistry if you miss something in the method, or do a very little thing wrong, it messes up the whole recipe. I managed to make it taste very good but to make it looks nice it is another story. I will try again soon and make my pastry chef’s friends very proud of me as they are the only ones who can make a cake that looks and tastes just perfect.

Recipe available upon request