I'm a cook, not a pastry chef, and the difference is that a cook improvises and a pastry chef weighs things. I have been trying to become the second kind of person for fourteen batches.
Batches one to five: the custard. Too eggy, too sweet, then not set, then set like a tyre. The answer is a sugar syrup at exactly the right temperature and a lemon peel you take out at exactly the right moment, and you learn the moment by getting it wrong four times.
Batches six to eleven: the pastry. It has to be laminated, it has to be rolled into a log and cut into coins and pushed into the tin with a wet thumb, and it has to go into an oven hotter than any oven I own. Mine go in at 250 and come out blond. Theirs go in at 300 and come out burnt in the right places.
Batch fourteen: close. Aiko says honestly. I'll take honestly. Batch fifteen this weekend, and if it's right you'll hear about it, and if it's wrong you'll hear about that too.
