Sebastien Blanc-Tailleur, a Parisian pâtissier, has at all times had a ardour for confections. “I’ve been obsessed by pastry since I used to be just a little boy,” he mentioned. Since opening his eponymous enterprise in 2015, Mr. Blanc-Tailleur has discretely turn into one of the crucial prestigious creators of wedding ceremony and special-occasion muffins in France.
“Pastry making is my very own candy type of insanity,” he mentioned with a smile. “However it comes from my household. My mother and father are collectors who love uncommon antiques, effective work, artwork and drawings, so I perpetuate the household custom by the medium of pastry.”
Along with making muffins and pastries, Mr. Blanc-Tailleur, 32, has additionally turn into a severe collector of vintage books about pastry, particularly cherishing these by the 18th-century chef Antonin Carême on pastry molds. “With their shapes and complex detailing, pastry molds are a singular expression of France’s gastronomic historical past and creative heritage,” Mr. Blanc-Tailleur mentioned.
“This man has gold in his palms,” mentioned Yannick Alléno, a Michelin three-star chef for whom Mr. Blanc-Tailleur had labored as sous-chef pâtissier at Ledoyen, a restaurant in Paris, in 2014. “He has a tremendous humanistic sensibility and would possibly even be the reincarnation of Michelangelo,” Mr. Alleno mentioned.
With a ferocious dedication to grasp the world of sugar, Mr. Blanc-Tailleur left dwelling at 15 to turn into an apprentice to Christophe Turgot, a pâtissier who owned a pastry store within the seaside city of Villers-sur-Mer in Normandy. “My father resisted my plan at first, however he got here round,” he mentioned, including, “It was very arduous. I lived alone, and I labored nonstop. However Monsieur Turgot was form and took me beneath his wing.”
Subsequent, he moved to Toulouse, France, to take a job at Pillon, the town’s greatest identified high quality patisserie. “I labored all day, after which as a result of I had the important thing, I’d spend hours and hours, days even, alone within the kitchen the place the ornamental parts of the pastries have been made instructing myself and experimenting,” he mentioned.
Mr. Blanc-Tailleur’s tenacity led him to create muffins for weddings and particular occasions. “Creating a terrific wedding ceremony cake is all about making somebody’s desires actual in order that there generally is a kind of shared communion along with your partner, your loved ones and your company,” Mr. Blanc-Tailleur mentioned. “My work is to decipher the fantasies and needs of my shoppers and render them right into a cake that can thrill them and make them proud.”
Mr. Blanc-Tailleur’s clientele encompasses French and European aristocrats, tycoons, film stars, and style designers — together with Dior and the Saudi and Bahraini royal households. He has additionally labored with American prospects, most just lately making a 10-tiered mauve cake with intricate sugar wisteria blooms for the marriage of Misha Kordestani, a founder and president of Guin Data, a Los Angeles-based music conglomerate, final Could in Cannes, France. He additionally designed a lily of the valley-bedecked wedding ceremony cake for final November’s five-day wedding ceremony extravaganza of Jacob LaGrone and Madelaine Brockway, a rich couple from Texas.
“Designing a marriage cake entails parts of being an architect, an artwork historian and a jewellery designer,” Mr. Blanc-Tailleur mentioned. “My work is like edible high fashion as a result of each element issues.”
Regardless of the couple’s needs, if their tastes don’t align with Mr. Blanc-Tailleur’s restrained class, he could not take them on as a consumer. “Earlier than I settle for a fee, I meet a possible consumer to sound them out about what it’s they’re searching for and in addition to try to perceive their aesthetics,” he mentioned. “There are occasions after I’ve needed to refuse a consumer when it’s been clear to me that our tastes are incompatible.”
This doesn’t imply, nonetheless, that he’ll refuse each far-fetched request. He just lately produced a marriage cake that recreated the Duomo di Milano, a cathedral in Milan, as an intricately detailed miniature.
Mr. Blanc-Tailleur’s mediums are flour, butter, cream, and chocolate, amongst different components, however most of all sugar. He makes use of pâte à sucre, an edible sugar dough constructed from confectioner’s sugar, egg whites and glucose, to sculpt the elegantly elaborate particulars of the muffins.This contains edible lace and gilded foliage, together with the delicate and astonishingly lifelike flowers which are his signature.
With a employees of seven at an atelier in suburban Paris, he assembles the flowers one petal at a time, which is why a single wedding ceremony cake can signify a number of months of labor. Wedding ceremony muffins are normally ordered at the least six months upfront, and given the large quantity of hand work in every creation, he hardly ever produces greater than 12 muffins a yr.
The beginning value for a Blanc-Tailleur wedding ceremony cake is 7,500 euros, or round $8,100, whereas less complicated celebration muffins are comparatively extra reasonably priced, starting at 3,400 euros, or roughly $3,700.
Blanc-Tailleur’s enterprise has been awarded the label of Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivent, a prestigious French authorities label that designates a enterprise that continues to perpetuate conventional French artistry.
Mr. Blanc-Tailleur mentioned that whereas wedding ceremony cake traits usually change, he’s pleased with retaining the basic artwork of French pastry-making alive. His best pleasure is when a pair discovers that their wedding ceremony cake just isn’t solely lovely however tastes good, too.
“This is essential for me,” he mentioned. “My muffins should style nearly as good as they give the impression of being. “The final word aim of my work as a pâtissier is at all times to create gastronomic pleasure.”
