- The reason I wanted to be a pastry chef,
to me, pastry is an edible art.
When people come to our shop,
I'd like to feel like they are not only in the bakery,
but also in the art gallery and then they enjoy the space,
the pastries, pictures, like, ambience, everything.
When you go to the museum,
you go look around,
and then after that you go to the souvenir shop.
That's the same concept.
(enchanted instrumental music)
We are going to start with the corn.
We usually use, like, two cases per day.
We have six different components.
For making our pastries,
corn is the most energy.
Usually it takes three days.
I'm going to make the base of the caramel.
This is vanilla bean.
We are using, like, 700 grams of the vanilla bean per week,
and we are going to infuse it to our cream.
When I create the dessert,
it comes out, like, in a week or two weeks,
but sometimes some dessert takes like a few months.
That's the most fun part because you're, you know, using,
buying all the different types of ingredients.
For example, like, the white corn and the yellow corn
and bi-color corn and all the different companies
of the corn cans.
Even for making one corn cake,
you're having, like, so much different types of
the base of the corn.
So once the caramel is done, I'm straining.
Now I'm going to add the butter to finish our caramel.
(mixer whirring)
So we are going to make a corn biscuit.
A biscuit is a French word meaning cake,
so it's the simple sponge cake.
We're using the corn flour.
It makes the corn taste of our cake.
So I'm going to whip it, all these ingredients.
The second step, we are going to make the meringue
with the egg whites and sugar.
Going to add the meringue into the biscuit.
It has to be folded very delicately
to keep the meringue texture.
You know, the corn caramel,
we spread on the Silpat and then we are drying
for at least two days to make this corn powder,
and then after that we mix it and then sift it.
This corn powder makes more corn flavor of this corn cake.
We got the corn biscuit from the oven after baking.
I'm going to punch it.
When I create the cakes and desserts,
I love to play with the textures.
I like to have creamy texture, crunchy,
and then, like, soft texture, everything.
Because texture can bring more fun into your mouth.
I'm going to mold the corn sable
for the bottom of our corn desserts.
I'm making the corn mousse.
It's more fun to see it,
like, visually it looks like corn
and then when they taste it,
it's sweet but also a little bit savory.
It can be anything.
It can be a fruit, it can be food ingredients,
but also it can be objects or anything that I inspire.
The most important part of the process
is piping the corn kernels.
It defines the final visual of the corn dessert.
I'm piping all the corn kernels one by one.
And every morning, (laughs)
I got faster than beginning,
so maybe, like, one hour.
Before, there was two, three hours of the piping.
This is our yellow chocolate sauce with white chocolate.
We are going to spray on the top
of the corn for making a realistic visual.
When we spray, it's important to spray evenly everywhere,
because if it's too much,
it's too thick and it's not good for the taste,
and if it's too thin, it's going to be very fragile.
The chocolate protects our mousse,
but also it gives a little bit
of crunchiness on the outside of the corn.
So it's fun when you cut it.
So this is done.
This is enough amount of the spray,
and I'm going to finish with the corn leaf
for our final set.
So this is white chocolate
with green coloring for making the corn leaves.
We sprinkle the corn powder on the top.
At the beginning, you can taste, like, corn,
like, grilled corn flavor.
My favorite part of this corn is the sable,
so you finish with the crunchiness
and then chewiness of the sable.
It's a little fun.
It remains a long flavor into your mouth.
We are selling about 350-400 corn per week.
Since everything is hand-piped and then
it takes time to make it,
we can't do the mass production.
We have a limited quantity that we can make per day.
That's why we keep, like, selling out of the corn
around like 2:00 or 3:00 PM.
But I think the most fun part,
it's when I see, like, people enjoying the cakes
and desserts.
So that makes me happy.
For pastry, we have to use five cases of eggs,
and then, like, five to six cases of butter.
Every week we go through more than 30 kgs of chocolate.
We're using, like, white chocolate, milk chocolate,
different types of dark chocolate.
So, overall, we are using, like, more than 30 kilo per week
and maybe more.
We are going to make the chocolate cremeux
for our cake V.I.C., Very Important Chocolate Cake.
I wanted to make the chocolate layer cake.
For me, it's a very American-style dessert.
Personally, I love to eat the chocolate layer cake.
I love steakhouses here.
Even though I'm full of the steak,
I always wanted to finish with a chocolate layer cake,
and then that's why I named
it a Very Important Chocolate Cake,
because to me it's important at the end of the meal.
(Eunji laughs)
We have 13 layers.
We have six chocolate biscuit,
and then six chocolate cremeux,
including the black pepper caramel,
and we have the sable,
and then we finish with the glaze on the top
with the ganache inside.
It's 80% of dark chocolate and then 20% of milk chocolate.
I'm going to add the cream into caramel.
(cream sizzles)
I'm adding the egg yolk to make the cremeux.
(mixer whirring)
I do enjoy this process because it's kind of satisfying
to punch the exact same shape of the biscuit.
I'm going to put the biscuit at the bottom.
This cork is better to make it flat,
and also it's a circle so it's easier
to make it flat and even.
The next step is, we are going to
put the chocolate cremeux and the caramel.
I'm not really a chocolate person.
I like more fruity and then acid.
I want to accommodate everyone.
So this is our chocolate layer cake after unmolding.
Right now it's frozen
so I can be able to pipe it correctly,
and then I'm going to freeze it quickly for spraying.
This is a dark chocolate sauce.
The reason why I'm finishing with spraying is not only
for the protection of our cake and cream,
but also visually it's very nice to see the matte texture
compared to the, like, shiny glaze on the top.
(torch spewing)
It's the best way to clean when you work
with chocolate because it's hard to remove it.
So working with the torch is better,
it's easy to clean it.
(piping bag crinkling)
We are going to finish
with the chocolate glaze and gold leaf.
Then this much, it's 180, so it's precious and expensive.
This is our V.I.C., Very Important Chocolate Cake.
(enchanting music)
I've been a pastry chef for 17 years.
I had a lot of ideas in my head.
Everything was really fun,
from creating this space to creating the menu.
All of our desserts at Lysee are my babies.
I have 25, 26 babies.
Matthieu is my husband.
He handles the bread side
and then I handle the pastry side.
He is a very good pastry chef.
Actually it's really fun to work together.
It's very good energy.
Now we are going to make the kouign-amann.
It's very important to laminate the dough
with the butter and respect a certain temperature
because the butter,
when it's too warm or when it's overworked,
So we are brushing the water to stick the sugar
onto the dough,
and then I'm going to sprinkle the sugar.
It was in the proofer for two hours
and then now it's ready to bake.
I like to, like, shape the dough.
I like the texture.
It's our shape.
We are going to put it into the mold.
After that it's ready to go into the proofer,
and after two hours we're going to bake into the oven.
And we're going to have our, like, higher, crispy,
airy, and flaky kouign-amann.
So sometimes at the end of the day,
like, we are doing kind of, like, competitions,
like, who's making faster. (giggles)
(upbeat music)
So this is caramel powder.
So we are going to add it on the top,
and for making it more crispy and then shiny texture.
Then we are going to bake it just a few minutes.
Now its caramel is cooked, so it's so much shinier.
It's going to add more, like, crispy texture.
You can see all the layers.
This is the caramelized sugar, like, naturally caramelized
in our kouign-amann.
It's airy and then flaky.
So when you eat it, it's not too heavy,
it's just the richness of the butter.
But when you love butter,
you love kouign-amann.
Cheers. (giggles)
(kouign amann crunching)
So good.
(gentle piano music)
Pastry is very detailed.
It is made by hand, everything like piping,
from making, scaling everything by hand.
It is very important to have good people
and then a great team to have the good quality,
and they keep making the best products
and keep the consistency.
The team is really important to me.
Until opening and then running the shop,
maybe until, like, first month, I couldn't really
realize that is this real or is this true?
That finally my dream came true,
and then in New York City.
I wanted to make people, like,
to see our dessert as an edible art,
but also joyful when they eat it.
I would tell younger Eunji to keep chasing your dream
with passion and love.
Keep continuing, keep chasing it
so your dream can be true one day.
(enchanting music)