4 Bakers Keeping Sweet Traditions Alive

[Music] keeping a tradition alive for generations is no piece of cake but these timeless desserts have been bringing delight for decades even centuries with each one sweeter than the last these are ponchi or if it's on its own it's a pond check it's a polish treat made from deep-frying dough with a stuffed sugary jam filling and then it's covered in even more sugary icing basically it's the definition of delicious wait don't touch we need to film it first warsaw's a vibrant city with a bit of a sweet tooth and that's where polsky comes in there are a few spots around the city to get palmski but no more authentic than here this tiny bakery has been producing panchky since 1925. [Music] which is sylvia's great-grandfather created the secret family recipe which still stays strong to this day [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] and on fat thursday the last thursday before lent boy do they sell a few more does that vertically audition eight to ten thousand [Music] [Music] [Music] guatemala is known for a lot of things coffee avocados but more than anything else it should be known for chocolate this is a place called chocola it's known for rain and fertile soil which means it's an ideal place to grow cacao the main ingredient in chocolate the ancient maya grew it there 2500 years ago and people are still growing it there today my name is victor alfredo diaz cultivar cacao cola fermenta [Music] a so after the cacao is grown it's off to the chocolatiers brenda is a fourth generation chocolatier she makes her chocolate the same way her great-grandmother used to back in the day and now she's teaching her children to do the same days [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] this is fernando he's a newer chocolatier taking a more modern approach to guatemala's chocolate renaissance [Music] is [Music] traditional [Music] haven't you ever had those times in your life where you just feel all consumed with tasting something again that you haven't had in years and years that's really what i'm doing here is bringing back those incredible desserts those incredible experiences that have gone extinct i put myself through this process of resurrecting desserts because i truly feel that a good dessert can change the course of your day i'm valerie gordon owner of valerie confections and i'm also a dessert anthropologist the way this project of resurrecting historic desserts began was in 2009 the food editor from the los angeles times magazine asked me to create a plums coffee crunch cake for an article that she was doing and it was this amazing full circle moment because i grew up with that cake i know that cake and i missed that cake terribly blums was an incredible bakery and cafe in california there were eight locations the last one closed in the 80s when the article came out we literally received 125 phone calls from people going oh my god i want this cake so the desserts that i resurrected to date are of course the coffee crunch cake from blums i've brought back the banana shortcake from chasen's the brown derby grapefruit cake is another cake that i've resurrected and now is soon to be the coffiesta sundae as well the anthropology of the dessert resurrection is really one of the most interesting parts of all of this i start the research process at the central library there is a room and this is a very well guarded room called the menu vault there are menus that date back for 150 years i find that looking at the actual menus is so much more gratifying than just pulling something up online because you're really getting to the heart and soul of the place you're almost transported into that place at that time by holding something that these people held you really are then i email a bunch of people or i call a bunch of people who were natives to los angeles or whatever city the bakery was in to find out hey do you remember this do you remember that we always used to call this the adult sunday because this is the one my mom would eat can they describe the texture of a whipped cream can they tell me whether there was vanilla in it or not i'm pretty sure they did one basic yeah recipe for whipped cream and then flavored accordingly right it was little kid whipped cream one cherry yes this is amazing like you you have been indispensable i'm not particularly interested in retro it is about reliving those sense memories it's sort of like when you hear a song that was your favorite song from 1982 you're really thrown back into that moment it's become this very emotional very fulfilling part of my job to bring these cakes back for people these little custard tarts these eggy sugary treats are everywhere in portugal here here and here some say the prestige de belang is the original paste dinata or custard tart in this little factory through this kitchen there's a recipe that has been kept top secret for almost 200 oh not years one guys i can't get in here i'm sorry [Music] okay i'm miguel clerini and i'm part of the management of prestige blind this special recipe you will only find here at this shop we sell an average of about twenty thousand tarts a day in the summer maybe around forty thousand cakes a lot of cakes the stages of belang as they call them here are simple tarts really egg yolk milk some flour sugar but it's how they make them in complete secrecy that makes these tarts a national trigger we have six people knowing the recipe in the family my father my cousin and myself miguel perino the three chefs which is vitor dominguez eliseo jamiro and carlos martinez the recipe is so secret all the bakers signed non-disclosure agreements to keep the timeless tarts a true mystery [Music] staged blind is one of the earliest recipes at least here in lisbon we know that the recipe was invented in the monastery of geronimo in the early 19th century this one once they have the recipe the chefs now sworn to secrecy are giving keys to this door they work inside the factory in a separate room that we call the ofcena do sugredo in portuguese it's like the secret shop or secret room they have to work in a separate room because the process can only be seen by them so today we haven't found anyone that explained the recipe as it is if it happened well we probably would have to lock him up in the basement and throw away the key no just kidding okay secret keeper what's the best way to eat one of these custard tarts usually i like it simple but that's just me most people like with a little bit of cinnamon on top this is the hard part of the job [Music] this is super hard i don't know how you do it you

Channel: Great Big Story

Views: 366,122

Keywords: great big story, gbs, lag, documentary, docs, new releases, food & drink, flavors, great big reels, candy, sugar, cake, dessert, sweet, sweets, sweettooth, cream, custard, tarts, pączki, dough, Portugal, Poland, Los Angeles, shortcake, banana, anthropologist, snack

Id: 85VapLsO2zM

Length: 12min 1sec (721 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020