In her Parisian shop, Chiao-Wei herself develops the red cakes that the Taiwanese feast on. A gluttony to taste in salted or sweet version.
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In Taiwan, the children sometimes take their taste in the street, around small carts with funny pancake molds that allow you to make Wheelcakes, red cakes. Cooked minute, these round pastries, halfway between the waffle and the pancake, are filled with pastry cream, with azuki bean (small red bean), with black sesame or taro paste.
Ex-heads, Chiao-Wei wanted to find and share the taste of her childhood. It is the first, to our knowledge, to sell craft cakes in Paris. To do this, the young woman looked for the best flour mixtures to give them the famous contrast between soft and crisp external. It sells them in a shop of around twenty square meters whose furniture was made with a carpenter friend.
on the wall, calligraphies of her cousin, baskets of her mother. On the shelves, children’s games from her house, all of wood, hand carved. It’s nothing and that’s all. Today, Chiao-wei tells its story behind the counter while filling the wheat cakes with its preparations from fresh products. “I do everything, all alone: cooking, papers … Fortunately, I have good friends who come to help me.”
A Taiwanese smiles by hearing us commanding almost all of the card. He savor the feeling of being here as there and tastes his Wheelcake seated behind the small wooden cart designed in tribute to the street sellers of this famous pastry … The time to finish preparing the Oolong and Chiao-wei tea brings two Small wooden trays garnished golden cakes. On each, a stamp indicates the perfume. In the cup, the Milky Oolong lets out the scent of lush mountains – all teas come from Kancha Tea, Montrouge tea house specializing in organic.
The conversation rolls while the first cakes are devoured. The one with a marinated turnip is crunched with apprehension, but welcomed with a large smile of contentment. The sweet acidity of the root vegetable worked in pickle, the way it is finely grated and still crunchy combine with the softness of the cake. The so-called vegetarian version (mushroom and tofu) is a little soft, therefore disappointing.
But, when the tasting of the sweet repertoire comes, the smile returns. The pastry cream infused with grilled hojicha tea drips with delight on the lips while the cake filled with black sesame wins the palm of the treat. The granular and sweet device on the wire lets explode the gluttony of the seed with a subtly roasted taste. Even by never having grown up in Taiwan, the gluttons of the day have returned to their childhood and know that they will return here, because life is also a wheel that turns.