Dallas-born Pastry Chef Releases French Pastry Cookbook

Sometimes I get the fantasy of squirting batter into madeleine shapes while wearing a fleur-de-lis print shirt, sleeves rolled up to my elbows, an apron tucked tightly around my waist, and some kind of beautifully decorated cake stand, waiting to receive the delicate, powdered confectionery powdered with sugar.

This is easy to imagine when you look at French Pastry Made Simple by Dallas-born Molly Wilkinson: Foolproof Recipes for Eclairs, Tarts, Macarons, and More, which came out in June (Page Street Publishing Co.). She wrote it in her Versailles apartment, where she lives and teaches virtual classes in person and since the pandemic.

Her roots in Dallas are evident in the book’s dedication to her mother, who promoted the budding crumb artist who was relentlessly baking chocolate chip cookies and brownies. “My mother just filled the fridge with butter and I baked all summer,” says Wilkinson of her childhood in Richardson. In college (at TCU), she was the friend who stayed up until 3 a.m. and made you a nine-story birthday cake.

After working for a digital marketing agency in Fort Worth for five years, Wilkinson traveled to Paris to study at Le Cordon Bleu – elementary, intermediate and advanced degrees in pastry making – which she combined with long walks around town with pastries combined a tiny budget. With the diploma in hand, she created desserts in a castle in the Ariège region in the Pyrenees and in a farmhouse in nearby Gascony. She started teaching from home. And when the pandemic hit and their classes went virtual, a publisher turned to the book. It was a heavenly game: the students were the testers for the guinea pig recipes for the book.

And “I knew which measuring devices” [American home cooks] have how they think about things. I was able to break things down and say, ‘Okay, you don’t have to have these special shapes; You can just have a muffin pan and we’ll make it work, ‘”says Wilkinson.

Photo by Joann Pai

French pastries made easy: Easy recipes for eclairs, tarts, macarons and more
By Molly Wilkinson
Page Street Publishing Co. (June 2021) $ 22.99

VIRTUAL COOKING CLASSES

In the book, which is interspersed with photos from her apartment with herringbone parquet and marble table tops, she shows you the building blocks of a centuries-old French confectionery tradition. It’s not a tome with the abundance of Julia Childs work, but it’s carefully broken down into sections with 10 elements that you can combine and combine to learn how to make pâte sucrée (the delicious base of pies), crème pâtissière, meringue or pâte à choux. to prepare. This can be used to create the uvres presented on delicate cake stands: a rolled raspberry sponge cake, a chocolate-walnut-pear tart with caramel sauce, cream puffs, macarons, feather-light eclairs and the absurdly fabulous caramel-drizzle tower from a Croquembouche.

Confectioner Molly Wilkinson whistles into a Madeleine can with a steady hand.

Joann Pai

An entire pastry shop full of delicacies, probably photographed right on Molly’s table top.

Joann Pai

Ten elements are reconfigured into more than 60 desserts. It’s a dizzying, bizarre whirlwind. But their motto is also not to break a sweat. “My style is not these perfect, clean lines. It’s more about celebrating the beauty of French pastries. It’s that rustic elegance. They know it’s well made and the flavors will be good, but there isn’t that intimidating perfection. ”But it does add“ a bit of drama or height, ”meringue or whipped cream that is more Texas-based. It is, she says with a laugh, “my style, which is kind of Alice of Wonderland,” meets Marie Antoinette.

So, if you want to unleash all of the pent-up creative energy from watching way too many episodes of baking shows, or flaunt all of those pandemic baking arts, then dive in. If you want to turn your Dallas kitchen into a Parisian patisserie wonderland, she’s gonna help.

But, says Wilkinson, “if I want something that will remind me of home, it’s chocolate chip cookies.”

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