From self-taught cook to food blog queen

AS A girl, Karelle VignonVullierme ( right) loved eating the Beninese dishes her mother cooked but never bothered to learn how to make them herself.

But that has not stopped the Senegal-based blogger, now in her 30s, from building up an adoring online audience of thousands by whipping up mouth-watering meals from all corners of the globe.

Vignon-Vullierme has a strong following in France and francophone Africa for her skill in perfecting everything from Indian naan bread to spicy Moroccan soup, with frequent indulgences for her sweet tooth.

“I love to eat,” says the French-Beninese former journalist, at her home in Dakar, prepping molten chocolate cakes in her kitchen at the nerve centre of Les Gourmandises de Karelle (Karelle’s Treats), an ever-expanding social media and blog operation that has become her full-time job.

Vibrant close-up photos of her culinary creations are accompanied by friendly, chatty comments about the recipes.

“I think I’ve already told you this but it’s only recently that I’ve learned to love and to eat courgettes,” she writes in a 2015 post for chicken and courgette cake on the website.

Perhaps surprisingly for a food blogger, who has almost 40,000 Facebook followers and 15,000 on Instagram, cooking rarely featured in her life.

Her mother “is a great cook,” she told AFP. “When she would tell me: ‘Karelle, come to the kitchen and watch what I’m doing here’, I would just say: ‘Tell me when it’s ready’!”

But after falling in love with Franco-Senegalese engineer Olivier Vullierme and following him to Dakar, she began studying French-language cooking websites such as Marmiton, Cuisine AZ and 750g.

What started out as a gesture of affection began to change her life, as she experimented with savoury dishes for him, and plenty of cakes for herself.

“I learnt to cook online,” she says.

Dishes cooked at home for her husband were carefully photographed and posted on Facebook, leading to enquiring emails from friends.

All were quick and simple but at times offered unusual combinations that are something of a trademark.

She set up the Gourmandises de Karelle blog in late 2013, she says, “firstly, so that they would stop sending me messages saying: ‘How did you do that’?”

Her background had already exposed her to cuisine from three continents, and she happily produces Asian, African, European and North American dishes for her audiences.

Vignon-Vullierme’s audience falls into two camps “depending on the platform”, husband Olivier says, pointing to their slightly different expectations.

He describes himself as “very proud” of his wife but says few realise the enormous amount of time spent creating recipes, taking photos and videos, and responding individually to fans – a must in the social media age.

Vignon-Vullierme said her plan was never to “teach people how to cook”, but simply how to eat properly with inexpensive ingredients widely available.

She can now make her mother proud by throwing together an amiwo, a dish from Benin made with cornflour and chicken.

But, she says, her target are young city-dwellers, who “no longer have the time to spend three or four hours in the kitchen”. – AFP