The French and the Americans both seem to have a very clear image of what the other looks like: perhaps especially for the French, the Americans are a very clear entity, gleaned from different imported sitcoms and movies. They know what American high school looks like; they attempt to imitate American fashion (though the French teenagers are too consumed with their own image to really rock the backwards baseball cap properly). They listen to our music and watch our movies, and yet there are certain traditions that still leave them stumped.
I spent a summer on the western coast of France, not far from Bordeaux, when I was 16. It was a four-week study abroad program, and I was one of the only people who didn’t drink, which meant that when everyone else hit a club by the beach called La Maison Blanche, I spent time reading at my homestay or wandering Royan with the only other person on the program who wasn’t yet drinking, the Vegetarian.
Over the course of our three weeks in Royan, we took advantage of the seaside town as much as we could. Instead of spending our money on drinks, we spent it on restaurants. We went on long walks, getting ourselves lost in the winding streets. We got up early and visited bakeries just as they opened, to get our hands on warm croissants and baguettes.
I had another friend in Royan, one I had come with from high school. He went out dancing and drinking with the others, but he still invited us to his birthday celebration on the beach with his host family: two parents and a host brother our age I had a ridiculous crush on, but that’s neither here nor there.
The Vegetarian and I, both beginning to become interested in food, decided to bake our friend a cake, though neither of us had ever baked anything more complicated than Duncan Heines. This being in the days before high-speed Internet access (it was 2004), I called my mother in the States and asked for a basic cake recipe. I copied the recipe down in cups, and the Vegetarian and I spent several hours converting it and meticulously following our cut-and-paste recipe to the letter.
Several hours later, the cake we brought to the beach picnic left something to be desired. It had a texture similar to three-day-old poundcake, and the frosting we made was little more than icing sugar and milk. Our friend’s host family had brought a cake as well: a beautiful pâtisserie-purchased, perfectly round confection. As they passed out slices of each one, the latter quickly devoured as our cake sat in the sand, the ugly girl at the dance, I was overwhelmed with the strange realization that our well-meaning gesture had been misguided.
The family quite kindly explained — in broken English, though I already spoke fairly good French — that in France, one cooks everything and trusts the professionals for the baked goods. I didn’t understand, yet, that the perfect housewife making chocolate chip cookies from scratch for bake sales and snacks was an American ideal, that in France, your cakes and petit-fours were bought, that Sundays were made, not for homemade pancakes, but for bakery-bought croissants and pain au chocolat — or chocolatine, as they’re called in Royan.
People don’t take children seriously in either country, and it’s clear that, at 16, I was a child, at least to them. I’ve been living in France for five years, and I don’t hear any complaints when I make dessert now, though it’s usually of the rustic, American sort: cookies, quickbreads, brownies, pies. My Almost-Sister-in-Law, French as she may be, caught on to the trend and got me the LaRousse guide to French Desserts for Christmas, a book I happily put to good use when the Sous Chef was visiting last month.
After a lot of hemming and hawing, we picked this recipe, essentially a sugar cookie dough with a generous slathering of raspberry jam and an almond meringue topping. Complicated enough to be French, easy enough to be made by an American in a toaster oven. Oh, how I love when my worlds collide.
Tarte meringuée à la confiture de framboises (translated and slightly adapted from Le Petit LaRousse des Desserts)
3 eggs
125 g. butter, softened
250 g. sugar
7.5 g. vanilla sugar
250 g. flour
11 g. baking powder
70 g. powdered almonds
200 g. raspberry jam
Prepare the dough. Separate the egg yolks from the whites. Cut the butter into cubes, keeping 5 grams to the side for buttering the ramekins. In a large bowl, beat together the yolks, half the sugar and the vanilla sugar, until it becomes pale and foamy.
Add the butter and mix until well combined. Sift in the flour and baking poweder and work in with your fingertips until you have a uniform dough. Form a ball and wrap in plastic wrap. Keep in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Butter six small ramekins. Remove the dough from the fridge and cut into six equal pieces. Roll each one out and place it in the ramekin: it should be large enough to come up to the edges. Spread jam into the bottom of each tart.
Prepare the meringue: beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Add the rest of the sugar and the powdered almonds, gently folding to incorporate. Gently spoon into a pastry bag or a plastic sandwich bag with one corner cut off. Add the topping to each tart shell.
Bake for about 30 minutes, until the dough is cooked through and the meringue is browned on top. Allow to cool at least 30 minutes before serving, or risk burning your guests with hot jam.
what a sad story! that poor little cake!! 🙁 This looks yummy.