HOME SWEET HOME
Nostalgia helped fuel a second career of baking for an American in Paris
Author Frank Adrian Barron was missing home when he moved abroad, so he took to seasonal baking. Barron and his now-husband, James, moved to Paris 10 years ago. It was January, and when Barron, a transplanted Californian, hit the produce section at a nearby supermarket in search of smoothie ingredients, he was confronted by a distressing reality: no strawberries.
“The French, I’d quickly find out, preferred to eat by the season, buying fruits and vegetables right when they’re harvested, when their flavor is at their natural peak,” he writes in “Sweet Paris: Seasonal Recipes From an American Baker in France.” “Though I was aware of this practice in theory, it wasn’t how we ate where I was from, a land where everything is available at any time.”
That experience marked the start of Barron’s foray into the French way of eating.
That wasn’t the only change he was making. Within a year, the art historian was immersing himself in a new-to-him avocation: cake baking.
“I was missing home and wanted to go back,” he said in a recent interview. “I didn’t speak French, I didn’t have a work visa, I felt lost. I turned to baking at home for the nostalgia, and because I missed American-style cakes — Bundt cakes, coffee cakes, banana bread, chocolate cake with buttercream — which are impossible to find in France.”
After a lot of trial and error — and watching countless YouTube instructional videos — Barron found himself fulfilling cake requests among his expat friends. That grew into baking cakes for coffee shops and pop-ups, then hosting cake decorating classes in the couple’s apartment in the city’s Marais district. A blog (cakeboyparis. com) and a popular Instagram account (@cakeboyparis) led to the just-released “Sweet Paris.”
“I kind of let the cake journey take me where it was going to take me,” he said. “I did not count on it becoming a second career.”
“Sweet Paris” is beautiful to look at (thanks to captivating photographs by Joann Pai) and a treat to read, with approachable and appealing recipes that are seasonally influenced and reflect Barron’s American background and his adapted French sensibilities: lavender honey madeleines and white peach tarts in the summer; persimmon Bundt cakes and apple-cardamom tea cakes in the fall; and chestnut cakes and orange-glazed gingerbread in the winter. Right now? Rhubarb, of course.
In a recent phone conversation, Barron discussed his household’s sweet-tart continuum, the beauty of Bundt pans and the glories of Italian meringue buttercream.
Q: What draws you to rhubarb? I was surprised to learn that it’s a relatively new-to-you ingredient because your recipes for rhubarb land squarely in the “gotta-make” category. A:
I don’t recall having a lot of rhubarb when I lived in San Diego and San Francisco. For the French, it probably wouldn’t make the Top 5; it’s the U.K. that really celebrates rhubarb. But it was important for me to include rhubarb in the book because it’s my husband’s favorite. My interests are more on the sweet side, but his flavor profile is Team Tart all the way, so he leans to things like lemon and rhubarb.
Q: Your Tarte à la Rhubarbe is beautiful and delicious. Why the tart format? A:
For the French, a tart is their go-to for when it comes to highlighting a particular flavor, because it’s a beautiful base for showing off the ripeness of the featured ingredient, like rhubarb.
Q: After a decade of living in Paris, is there a seasonal ingredient that you anticipate eating — and baking with — every year? A:
My favorite season for baking is the fall, and one of the reasons is because that’s when the Mirabelle plum comes into season. It’s a tiny golden plum, bursting with flavor, from the Lorraine region, and I’d never heard of it or tasted it until we moved to Paris. It’s only in the markets for about two weeks. During that time, everyone goes crazy and buys them by the bucketload, and you see them in tarts in boulangeries all over Paris.
Q: I love it that you’re so into Minnesota-made Nordic Ware Bundt pans. What’s the story? A:
My mom’s specialty cake was a cinnamon Bundt cake, and my homage to that cake was my first attempt at baking cakes. The Bundt shape is a very American thing, it’s very nostalgic for me. Bundt cakes tend to look a little extra-fancy, like you went to all of this work, but the pan does all the work.
Q: Do you have any advice for first-time cake bakers who might be intimidated at the prospect of baking a cake? A:
This might sound basic, but my advice is to very closely follow the directions. Baking is not the same as cooking. With 99% of baking, it is imperative that you follow the exact measurements and instructions to a T, or else the recipe won’t work out. I’ve had many cake fails over the years, and that’s how I also learned that prepping — cutting parchment paper, dusting the pans with flour — isn’t fun, but if you skip it, you’ll have less-than-perfect results.
Q: Is there a cake in the book that to you is most emblematic of Paris? A:
My plan was to do a lot of cakes that were a mix of flavors and styles. The one that most closely matches a classic French cake is the gâteau opera, which is the famous chocolate-coffee cake created in Paris and inspired by the Opera Garnier. I love coffee and chocolate. The original is a very petite, elegant, rectangular cake, with chocolate ganache and edible gold leaf. I tried to keep my version as close to the original as possible, but I supersized it into a giant layer cake. Voilà, the American version.