What Happens When a Pastry Chef Is Forced to Go Gluten-Free
Every week, we spotlight a different food blogger who’s shaking up the blogosphere with tempting recipes and knockout photography. Today, we delve into the world of Aran Goyoaga of Cannelle et Vanille. Check back every day this week for a different Cannelle et Vanille recipe.
Photos courtesy of Aran Goyoaga.
There’s a cruel irony to Aran Goyoaga’s gluten sensitivity. After all, the blogger behind Cannelle et Vanille — herself a trained pastry chef — practically grew up in her grandparent’s pastry shop, located in the French side of Basque Country, churning out brioche and croissants. Indeed, before her diagnosis, Goyoaga’s life revolved around gluten.
Although as a child she wasn’t allowed the floured surfaces of her grandparents’ shop — that was a blue collar job, and Goyoaga’s parents had loftier aspirations for her — Goyoaga couldn’t help but give into the allure of sugar and butter.
After a brief stint studying business at university, at 24 she moved to the United States to study international pastry and baking at Florida (now Lincoln) Culinary Institute in West Palm Beach. While in school, she slaved over fancy tarts and mini eclairs for the local Ritz-Carlton, a challenging job she relished all the same.
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Gluten-free pear and hazelnut tart.
“I loved working there — it was a great place,” Goyoaga told Yahoo Food. But life took a turn three years later, when she and her husband were expecting their first child. “To be a good pastry chef, you can’t work part time. It has to be everything you do, because I would never say it’s a 40-hour week. It’s a 70-hour week, standard. I couldn’t sustain that. Financially it didn’t make any sense, and career-wise it didn’t make any sense, either.”
So Goyoaga hung up her toque and headed home to France to raise her child. Before long, though, she was practically climbing the walls with boredom.
“I wasn’t super happy to not have that creative outlet in food,” she said. “And that’s when I started the blog.”
Goyoaga’s first post on Cannelle et Vanille — which means “cinnamon and vanilla” in French — went up in January of 2008. For the first few months, her content wasn’t exactly geared toward the masses. “I still had very much a fine pastry chef mentality; [I’d use] glucose syrups and measure out 80 grams of egg whites. People were like, ‘What does that mean?’”
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Over time, Goyoaga tweaked her approach, creating recipes more geared toward the everyday baker, which meant thinking less like a Ritz-Carlton chef and more like a home cook. But before the transformation was complete, Goyoaga fell seriously ill.
“I did a bunch of tests, [and] finally, my doctor said, ‘You can’t eat wheat anymore,’” Goyoaga recalled. Her first reaction was shock — she’d grown up eating gluten around the clock and never thought twice about it. Then she got down to business, adapting her pastry-centric lifestyle to fit a gluten intolerance.
“Wheat was something that I used every day, so it was an interesting time [getting by without it],” Goyoaga said. But she’d always enjoyed playing with ingredients, and began to consider her new diet an exciting challenge. “It drove me even more,” she said. “At the time, everything that was gluten-free or allergy-free wasn’t very refined, but I wanted to bring my pastry background and pastry technique into the world of gluten-free.”
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Apricots and raspberries in an oat crust.
Goyoaga did just that. Today, her blog features elegant dishes like pistachio nougat, rum-spiced pear and hazelnut tarts, and salted buckwheat chocolate chip cookies, all sumptuously styled desserts only revealed to be gluten-free upon closer examination.
The appealingly visual nature of Cannelle et Vanille is part of what has caused it be wildly popular on social media (her photographer skills are self-taught.) The site boasts tens of thousands of followers across several platforms, notably Instagram, on which 260,000 people tune in for Goyoaga’s gluten-free creations. The success has earned Goyoaga a book deal (in 2012, she released Small Plates and Sweet Treats: My Family’s Journey to Gluten-Free Cooking) and acclaim as the host of food photography and styling workshops.
For the most part, Goyoaga is at peace with her diet, and she’s certainly glad for the success of Cannelle et Vanille. There are still things that get to her, though.
“When I go to Paris, I can’t eat the apple brioche, and it makes me sad,” Goyoaga said. But then, she brightens: “But not really, because I was getting so sick. So it’s not even worth it!”
More amazing food bloggers who should be on your radar:
Food and Art Intersect in Billy Green’s Neon-Colored Kitchen
After Breast Cancer Diagnosis, a Baking Blogger Uses Cake to Tell Her Story
How Food Network Inspired This Blogger to Cook for Her Family at 14
