Gauri Varma is the "Willy Wonka" of the professional kitchen. It took her full 3 years to establish as a patissier and invite us to talk about her journey, inspiration, love for the colour pink and cakes *wink*
With no formal training, she deserves an applaud for handling a unique bakery business which "does not" involve any artificial sugary items, preservatives but LOVE !
The one thing we loved about her is that she can bake anything and everything as per the demands of her customer. She creates delicious cakes, pies, tarts, cookies, muffins and biscotti.
Her signature dish "Gooey Chocolate Brownie" is the concoction of coco, flour and liquids. These small brownies are soft and tender and gooey and melts straight away in the mouth. They have a rich bitter-sweet taste and all natural colour, adding unrivaled depth to the bake.
Gauri takes inspiration from pastry parlours in Paris and admits her tour to Paris every year for motivation and developing her personal characteristics. Having an eye for creativity is particularly important in making pastry more than any other type of culinary. As a chef, she handles fragile and perishable items which will need complete knowledge of food safety. Her nutrition science knowledge is vital to take extreme caution while handling food items as it is about her customers' health.
Her range of coloured French Meringue are both visually and taste-wise 'Beautiful'. Made with whipped egg whites, sugar and natural colours are baked until crisp and can be consumed as it is or decorated on top of cakes and pies and tarts.
When we saw Gauri meticulously in action, she challenged that no where in Delhi we could find Red Velvet Cake as perfect as at G's Patisserie. The dark red cake was prepared traditionally with cream cheese as frosting. There are so many variation in this cake that one never really knows if they are enjoying the taste or the colour of the cake.
Indians are ruled by Danish Butter Cookies since forever. No offense to the brand but what could taste more delicious than hand-baked fluffy butter cookies ? Nothing ! G's bake the freshest, delicious and simply buttery cookies. Homemade vanilla butter cookies are unleavened cookies consisting of fluffy butter, flour and sugar. These cookies are crumblier, crispier and more buttery in flavour than the typical cookie made with high-fat sweet cream butter. Which is exactly why one should buy G's butter cookies.
Our last segment was filled with laugh, excitement and lessons *YAYAYAY*
The most intriguing part at G's was the dessert making lesson from scratch. Who loves tart ? WE LOVE TARTS. Who loves experimenting with flavours ? WE LOVE EXPERIMENTING FLAVOURS.
So, for the last segment we learnt to bake tart.
STEP 1 : Kneading the dough made out of flour, cold cut butter and egg. Knead till it comes together.
STEP 2 : Rolling the dough with the rolling pin creating a flat surface and roll out the dough in the tart shell and with the heel of the hand smear until the entire tart pan has equal quantity of dough. Scrap the extra dough from the top with the knife.
STEP 3 : Put the tart in a preheated oven and bake until golden brown and crisp.
STEP 4 : With the tip of the finger give the tart a nice massage with hot chocolate. Then fill the tart with thick chocolate ganache.
STEP 5 : Decorate the tart with each and every thing one likes including coloured sugars, meringue, lemon curd, silver sugar balls and various sugary produces. Voila ! It's done :')
What distinguishes Gauri from other pastry chef is her detail-orientation. As we see desserts are usually multilayered, it requires proper assembling of several components together to have a decent final product.
Gauri inculcate an art of making and beautifying desserts. Having an artistic presence in her preparations creates temptation in the eyes of the beholder, as people want something that is feast for their tongue and eyes as well. Pastry being a niche specialized area, she has good quality equipments and ingredients flown down from different parts of the world and a self-taught highly trained faculty. Chocolates, pastries, designer cakes, muffins are just a few items from the wide range of menu at G's. We wish her and entire team all the luck for their future propositions and hope they spread love and smiles with their power of baking.
Place : G's Patisserie, Kalkaji
Price : On Request
