How do you go about making your recipes? Do you alter current ones? Or just go for it?
This will be a long answer, but many people have asked a variation of this and it’s one I’ve been meaning to answer in depth! I know you guys see me talking about time dedicated to recipe testing and development, but I’ve never totally explained that process.
First, the TL;DR: It’s a combination! I’ve been working in pastry long enough that I’ve assembled a pretty wide variety of “base” recipes that I know work. Those recipes are usually pretty similar regardless of where you look at them, because you don’t fix what isn’t broken. For example, every macaron recipe is the same, just with ratios slightly changed up. If you mess with it too much it won’t be a macaron anymore. Puff pastry has been pretty much the same for 100 years, etc. etc. Honestly, no pastry chef does recipes without some sort of foundation. Pastry isn’t as forgiving as savory cooking so you need a basic balance of ingredients that’s time-tested.
So, I have that foundation and I go from there. I’ll give an example of the Sailor Pluto Dessert I’m making right now. It’s chilling in the fridge waiting to be photographed, so the process is fresh in my mind.
First of all: designing is a process all on its own. My desserts generally aren’t based on a pre-existing dish or anything, so step 1 is always lots of sketching and planning. Anyway, the components are: mirror glaze, cardamom cream, blood orange mousse, and chai shortbread.
MIRROR GLAZE: All mirror glaze recipes are basically the same, with few meaningful variations. The first time I did Pluto back in 2015, I made a glaze completely from the ground up with no base to start from. It looked fine and tasted great, but I wanted a more opaque glaze this time to make hiding flaws easier for anyone trying the recipe at home. Standard mirror glaze was perfect for that.
BLOOD ORANGE MOUSSE: I have a ratio I like for fruit mousses in terms of gelatin:cream:fruit puree. I’ve just figured it out over the years with lots of experimenting and have it memorized. So when I wanted to develop a blood orange mousse, I cooked down enough juice to hit a flavor strength equivalent to a puree (taking notes on cook times, volume reduction etc.), sweetened according to my taste (writing amounts down, of course) and did the rest according to the ratio I know works. So it’s a unique recipe, but based on a ratio I know is reliable.
CARDAMOM CREAM: I used a creme brulee base recipe and flavored it with cardamom to taste. This is a base recipe I got yeaaaars ago, I’d guess in culinary school? It’s one of those recipes that’s similar everywhere, though my version has a higher fat content than most (a change I made a long time ago) which makes it ridiculously creamy. I chose it primarily because I know from experience this recipe freezes exceptionally well, and freezing is an important step in this dessert. Other custards would break.
CHAI SHORTBREAD: I began with a classic German shortbread recipe with just 3 ingredients: powdered sugar, flour and butter. I knew that this base recipe would have the texture I want, but not the flavor. I tweaked the spices and added ground fine chai accordingly, until I liked the taste.
I hope that sheds some light on things! I’m really into recipe development, and sometimes it’ll take multiple tries to get it right. Example: I attempted a storebought blood orange base in the mousse this time because I thought it’d be easier for readers. However, it messed with the texture and made the mousse too soft. (The flavor wasn’t that great either, honestly.) Adding more gelatin would have made it too jello-y, so it was back to the drawing board and I had a bunch of cakes to get rid of. Thankfully my husband has a sweet tooth, because this happens pretty frequently. It isn’t that the attempts are outright failures, but they aren’t where I want them in terms of quality.
Additionally, if a recipe works for me once but it’s a huge deviation from a base recipe or just one I made up on the spot, I try to make it multiple times to be sure the results will be easy to replicate.
So yeah, that’s how I create my recipes! Maybe this will shed light on why they take so long to complete. I’m super passionate about this, as you can see. That’s also why I always ask for honest feedback, good OR bad, to let me know anything I may have missed. I’m not offended by critique at all; I want to make really really good recipes and that involves listening to you guys if you say something isn’t working.
As a final aside: when people praise my recipes I get really emotional. I’ve gotten some comments from people telling me how well-written/precise/accurate they think my recipes are, and I have literally cried. Just bawled at my laptop like a giant baby.
