Parisian pastry chef Bastien Blanc-Tailleur has always had a passion for pastry. “I’ve been obsessed with pastries since I was a kid,” he said. Since launching her eponymous business in 2015, Ms. Blanc-Tailleur has become one of France's most renowned wedding and special occasion cake makers.
“Confectionery making is my own form of sweet madness,” he said with a laugh. “But it comes from my family. “My parents are collectors of rare antiques, fine paintings, artwork and drawings, so I continue the family tradition through the medium of pastry.”
In addition to making cakes and pastries, Ms. Blanc-Tailleur, 32, has become a serious collector of antique books on pastry, particularly cherishing a book on pastry molds by 18th-century chef Antonin Carême. “With their shapes and intricate details, the pastry molds are a unique expression of France’s gastronomic history and artistic heritage,” said Blanc-Tailleur.
“This guy has gold in his hands,” said Yannick Alléno, a three-Michelin-starred chef who worked with Blanc-Tailleur as sous chef pastry chef at Paris restaurant Ledoyen in 2014. “He has incredible talent. He may be the reincarnation of Michelangelo with a humanistic sensibility,” Mr. Alleno said.
Unwavering in his determination to master the world of sugar, Mr. Blanc-Tailleur left home at the age of 15 to become an apprentice to pastry chef Christophe Turgot, who ran a bakery in the Normandy seaside town of Villers-sur-Mer. “My father was against my plan at first, but then he turned around,” he said. “It was very difficult.” I lived alone and worked non-stop. But Monsieur Turgot was kind and took me under his care.”
He next moved to Toulouse, France, where he worked at Pillon, the city's best-known luxury patisserie. “I worked all day and had a key, so I would spend hours and hours and even days alone in the kitchen learning and experimenting with the decorative elements of pastry firsthand,” he said.
Mr. Blanc-Tailleur's obsession led him to create cakes for weddings and special events. “Creating a great wedding cake is about making someone’s dream a reality and creating a kind of shared connection with their spouse, family and guests,” Ms. Blanc-Tailleur said. “My job is to decipher my clients’ fantasies and desires and turn them into cakes that will wow them and make them proud.”
Mr. Blanc-Tailleur's clients include French and European aristocrats, tycoons, movie stars and fashion designers (including Dior and the Saudi and Bahraini royal families). He also works with American clients, most recently creating a 10-tier lavender cake with intricate sugar wisteria flowers for the wedding of Misha Kordestani, founder and chairman of Los Angeles-based music conglomerate Guin Records, in Cannes last May. france. He also designed a wedding cake decorated with lily of the valley for the five-day wedding of wealthy Texas couple Jacob LaGrone and Madelaine Brockway last November.
“Designing a wedding cake includes elements of being an architect, an art historian and a jewelry designer,” Ms. Blanc-Tailleur said. “My work is like edible haute couture because every detail is important.”
Whatever the couple wants, if their tastes do not match M. Blanc-Taileur's understated elegance, he may not accept them as clients. “I meet potential clients to explain what they are looking for and try to understand their aesthetic before accepting a commission,” he said. “There were times when I had to turn down a client when it became clear that our tastes didn’t mesh.”
But this doesn't mean he rejects every outrageous request. He recently created a wedding cake that recreates Milan's cathedral, the Duomo di Milano, in an intricate and detailed miniature.
Ms. Blanc-Tailleur's medium includes ingredients such as flour, butter, cream and chocolate, but mostly sugar. He sculpts the elegant, intricate details of his cakes using pate a sucre, an edible sugar paste made from confectioner's sugar, egg whites and dextrose. These include edible lace and gilded leaves along with his signature fragile and incredibly lifelike flowers. .
In an atelier outside Paris, with seven employees, he assembles the flowers one petal at a time. This is why one wedding cake represents months of work. Wedding cakes are usually ordered at least six months in advance, and because each creation requires a huge amount of manual labor, he rarely produces more than a dozen cakes a year.
Blanc-Tailleur wedding cakes start at 7,500 euros (about $8,100), while simple celebration cakes are relatively affordable, starting at 3,400 euros (about $3,700).
Blanc-Tailleur's business has been awarded the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivent label, a prestigious French government label designating businesses that continue to perpetuate traditional French artistry.
Ms. Blanc-Tailleur said that although wedding cake trends change frequently, she prides herself on keeping the classic art of French pastry making intact. His greatest joy is when couples discover that their wedding cakes are not only beautiful but also delicious.
“This is very important to me,” he said. “My cakes have to taste as good as they look. “As a pastry chef, the ultimate goal of my work is always to create gastronomic delights.”