After two gold medals at the International Cake Design Fair competition in Rome last year, Montauban pastry chef Carole Bertrand has just won two bronze medals at the world championship organized in Birmingham in the “wedding” and “painted” cake categories.
By participating in cake design competitions, the Montauban pastry chef, Carole Bertrand, simply wanted to “assess her level against professionals from all over the world”. Furthermore, it was not her, but her husband who came up with the idea he secretly registers it for his first competition, held last year in Rome as part of the International Cake Design Fair. “He gave me the news a month and a half before the event. I was first surprised, then quickly thrilled by the idea of raise a new challenge “, remember.
Then he gets to work creating, not just cakes, but real jobs which could allow him to score the spirits of jury members in front of 200 other participants. In the “wedding cake” category, it does a black cake. In the “painting cake” category, it represents the universe of the animated film Ratatouille. A reference that “speaks to everyone”, but very difficult to reproduce, because “I hadn’t yet never painted on the cakes”, smiles the pastry chef.
Two gold medals for a first competition
His first steps in the competition are paying off. Carole Bertrand returns from Rome with two gold medals around the neck. “I wasn’t expecting it, but this win really motivated me to keep racing,” he admits. So this year he signs up for the cake design world championship held in England. Here, it’s not 200, but 800 participants that he has to face in the same categories.
From his workshop in Montauban, he makes his first wedding cake, black, again, because it’s her favorite shade and that it “always works during the reception,” he believes. Then a second, on which he paints human faces for the first time: on one side the “good guy”, Tony Stark, on the other, the “bad guy”, Thanos (Marvel universe). ” I spent 140 hours a create these designs “, emphasizes Carole Bertrand.
So when he loads them into his specially hired van to go to Birmingham, the stress is at its peak. “The worst was on the ferry. Instead of an hour and a half, the Channel crossing took three times due to bad weather. There was big waves and the boat was rocking. I was seasick, but all I thought about was the state of my cakes in the hold,” she says. Upon arrival: more fear than harm. The Marvel characters are intact, as is the three-foot-tall wedding cake. These drawings also allow him to win two bronze medals.
Carole Bertrand is a “jack of all trades”
Carole Bertrand likes to challenge herself. Next year she plans to participate again in the cake design world championship and compete, this time, in new categories like “trompe l’oeil” or “horror”, despite never taking drawing lessons. Self-taught, he will do as usual: he will train through video tutorials watched on the Internet.
“Now I know that I will do cake design all my life,” says the one who however had difficulty finding her way. After leaving her baccalaureate, Carole Bertrand devoted herself first to psychology, then to hairdressing, management, before founding a mortgage brokerage firm with her husband Cyril Bertrand. “I do not regret anything, because I tested everything jobs I wanted to do she smiles. Only one was missing: the pastry chef. “The passion for cooking was passed on to me. I remember that she often prepared meals where each dish, from appetizers to desserts, corresponded to a theme. She constantly made us discover new flavours, new recipes. So my sister, brother and I organized ourselves the evening we prepared meals for my parents let them dine alone. They were lucky,” laughs Carole Bertrand. Then, Wednesday, it was pastry. An activity that has created a real vocation At his house.
Sweet Délices, a family business in Montauban
Nine years ago, Carole Bertrand left to take a three-month pastry course in Toronto, Canada at one of the best schools in the world, which has now closed. Back in France, she had a CAP pastry in Montauban. Acquires a place in the city even before graduation and opens, a few months later, “Sweet Delights”.
The brand, which celebrated its seventh anniversary, offers all kinds of bakeware for sale and organizes thematic workshops in parallel. “As the end-of-year celebrations approach, for example, we make gingerbread houses, Christmas logs or macaroons,” reveals Carole Bertrand. But her specialty remains cake design. She realizes between 8 and 15 personalized cakes every week made to order, for birthdays, weddings or other events. “In this profession you always have to be inventive in order to never reproduce what has already been done. I am also a very patient person because cake design requires a lot of rigor and meticulousness. This is also why I need to let off steam in the gym when I leave work », she admits.
Three employees work alongside her, as well as her husband, who is an independent communicator and takes care of all the communication part of Sweet Délices. “She knows cake design like the back of her hand, even if she doesn’t practice it”, jokes Carole Bertrand: “Without laughing, he has a very good eye for my cakes and I use his advice to improve my creations. We are a duo that works very well.” With them, their granddaughter: Clara, soon 7 years old, who also leads pastry workshops and also offers his cooking tutorials on social networks. The family business will open at the end of January 2023 at second franchise in Albi. And others will follow throughout the year, notably in Agen, Caen, Laval, Troyes, Marne-la-Vallée and also in Martinique.
