Claire Ptak is a California pastry chef who moved to
London in 2005 after working at Chez Panisse restaurant in
Berkeley, California. She owns Violet, a baking company in East
London which supplies her popular Broadway Market stall and is best
known for its American-style cupcakes with buttercream frostings
that change with the seasons. Her latest cookbook, The Violet Bakery Cookbook, has been a
hit on both sides of Atlantic. Indexed magazine Bon
Appétit recently caught up with Ptak to get her suggestions for home
bakers.
Her first piece of advice? Think like a cook - meaning
approach your desserts in a similar manner as your savory food
items, taking into consideration the balance of flavors.
"You're thinking about flavor all the time, adjusting it and
balancing it, just like when you make a soup," Ptak says of baking
at Chez Panisse. "I really took to that. Because even with
something like a chocolate chip cookie, you're still looking for
the perfect balance of sweet to salt to butteriness."
Another tip for home bakers is to taste everything, right
down to the flour. Taste any fruit you will be using before
you add it to a batter or dough - you can adjust the sugar level
depending on how sweet it is. Using buckwheat flour for the first
time? Ptak says you should taste that, too. "It's going to feel odd
to have a little lick of some raw flour, but you'll really get a
sense of what you're working with, and I think that's what people
should think about doing a bit more when baking," she says. Read
more of Ptak's advice at the Bon Appétit website.
Photo of The
Violet butterscotch blondie from The
Violet Bakery Cookbook by Claire
Ptak