My story

Hello! I’m Shi. When I was 21, I worked in graphic design and I would stare at a screen all day thinking when will this end? Is this what my life will be like for the next 45 years? It felt like jail - a life sentence to stare at a monitor.

At lunch I would go to dymocks and I came across a cook book where it had an apple tart with a meringue bird on top. It just looked beautiful and delicious.

I decided, I’m going to learn how to make that bird pastry! I dropped my job to part time and started at TAFE in Commercial Cookery.

Commercial cookery

My first exam I made a baked apple custard and I served it to the chef. She took one bite, spat it out and said “Are you trying to kill me?”

I failed my first dessert test. Lesson learnt - always taste before service as I used salt instead of sugar. Oops.

After TAFE and apprenticing at a few places, I enrolled to study patisserie in France. I applied and one day in the mail I got an acceptance letter…

Applying for school was one thing - but I didn’t have the funds! So I deferred it for one and a half years, did as many freelance design jobs and studied basic French at TAFE.

I’m ready! Bring on France!

France

I fainted in the first week in the kitchen. But the desserts are amazing! I was chowing croissants every morning in the kitchen and learnt how to make cakes and pastries, breadmaking, chocolates, frozen desserts and sugar art. We had our final exam (it went for ten hours straight) and it was time to start my apprenticeship.

After my first day in my apprenticeship, I went back to my apartment and cried. My French housemate came into the kitchen crying too. She pointed at me crying and the word ‘pourquoi’ ‘why’. I said ‘Chef horrible’. She said her ‘chef’ is horrible too - she started her apprenticeship in nursing just like me. And so we both cried in the kitchen, and she took out a bottle of red wine.

I piped hundreds of macarons each day, kneaded and shaped thousands of dough and croissants, peeled a million apples and fruits. My hands ached and spasmed, I literally couldn’t hold a piping bag anymore and I think I lost my fingerprints from peeling so many kiwi fruit. All the time with the chef yelling at me ‘Chinois’ - French for Chinese. I told him my name is Shi and I’m Australian and it got him more angry. “Why are you talking back? Why are you so slow?” he would yell and then swear in French. “No English! Why can’t you speak French properly?”

The struggle

I whisked the ganache too much so there bubbles. More yelling. I dared to ask for a thermometer when I was making caramel to dip the choux pastry. More yelling and made me do it the traditional way. I dared to use the pastry scraper to get hot croissants off the tray instead of my fingers. More yelling.

Even though he was horrible, when I watched him temper chocolate, he was a pro, like a teppanyaki chef. When he peels an apple it would take him 3 seconds. One morning he was doing his usual yelling routine when he got more fired up than usual and threw a knife with so much force on the metal bench top. The knife bounced off the table near my hand and off to the side - luckily missing my face.

I’m generally a quiet and hard working type - but something snapped in me and I just started yelling my head off in english expletives - a whole flood of english words. The whole kitchen became quiet, and I didn’t know what to do, so I started piping again and everyone else just worked in silence the rest of the day.

Do I quit? I’ve improved - I have arm muscles now, I can speak fluent French in the kitchen now, the bread chef doesn’t yell at me for shaping dough so slowly anymore, I pipe out hundreds of macarons the same size without getting an arm cramp. I worked and saved too hard to quit...so I decided to stay.

When I finally finished my apprenticeship his parting words was when he was training in Paris his chef was harder on him and he took it easy on me. I’m not sure what to think of that.

Sydney

I traveled around in Europe eating cakes and came back home to Sydney kind of broke. Do I look for a pastry job or go back in IT?

I chose the safe route and went back to IT and worked my way up over the years. One day in the office, staring out the window, I think to myself, I’m going to start my own cake business!