When pastry becomes unsweetened!

Pastry means sugar, and sugar means pleasure! This appetite for sugar is nothing new, since our bodies, and our brains in particular, need it as a source of energy. While sugar has been widely and abundantly used in pastry-making, notably for its preservative action, recipes today are cheerfully "desugared", adapted or even rethought. A pastry chef will tell you that he doesn't desugar his cakes. Is sugar replaced or combined with other sweetening ingredients? Or are its quantities simply reduced? Does sugar have a role to play in the structure of a pastry? It's not a question of promoting "light" or "low-fat" products, but rather of proposing an up-to-date, healthier range using quality ingredients. In France, many chefs are now putting forward new sweet collections. The impetus for this has come from the growing demand for sugar-free, gluten-free and even 100% plant-based patisserie, accessible to all, including diabetics and coeliacs. A real opportunity to open up to a new way of conceiving recipes, as Pierre Hermé reminds us: "Exploring new avenues to offer pastries that are ever more gourmet, but also more respectful of well-being, is essential today. It's a new line of work, a new way of thinking.

• Pierre Hermé & Frédéric Bau, Paris

In 2020, they launched the first "gourmandise raisonnée" desserts. A patisserie that forbids itself nothing, but whose recipes are rethought by eliminating the superfluous without ever making concessions on taste and texture. Sugar, for example, is reduced and used in the right proportions. The result is 4 ephemeral pastries: the Infiniment Vanille tart, the Infiniment Citron tart, the Chou Orphéo, and Constellation, totally stunning creations! The Infiniment Citron tart is now available until April 24, 2022.

Pierre Hermé Opéra 39 avenue de l'Opéra, Paris 2e

www.pierreherme.com

• Maison Plume, Paris

A coffee-shop patisserie opened by Tara Pidoux. Her aim: to make pastries with no added sugar, gluten-free, sometimes lactose-free and organic, so that indulgence is accessible to as many people as possible, including diabetics and gluten-intolerant people. To achieve this, it replaces sucrose with stevia, a natural sweetener, and the chocolate used is sweetened with maltitol. As a result, the pastries are 30% lower in calories. Let's go and try the Plume lemon meringue and the Plume chocolate!

Maison Plume 61 rue Charlot, Paris 3e

www.maisonplume-patisserie.com

• Alléno & Rivoire, in Paris

Aurélien Rivoire has banished sucrose in favor of birch sugar or xylitol, a natural sweetener for candying fruit. His dark chocolate-covered fruit is incredibly fresh, crunchy and juicy. We go for pineapple, saffron clementine and fine orange leaves. You'll also discover chocolate bonbons, signature clovers and bars where birch sugar is used on its own or mixed with sugar.

9 rue du Champ-de-Mars, Paris 7e

www.chocolat-allenorivoire.fr

• Mi Cielo, in Le Bouscat

Diego Cervantes and his wife Blanca use sugar as a seasoning (on average between 10 and 15% sugar). The emphasis is on ripe fruit and the sugar it contains. We go for the Pomme d'Amour, a tart in which apples and raspberries are candied in the oven and the homemade glaze is reduced in sugar. We'll also try the Soleil d'hiver, a 6% sweet panacotta tart with no-sugar-added baked pears and a lime-Madagascar pepper gel to spice things up.

Mi Cielo 13 bd Pierre-1er , 33100 Le Bouscat

www.micielopatisserie.com

• La Mutinerie, Sézanne

Luc Baudin and Léa Nevès have adapted their recipes, reducing the use of sugar by at least 30%. They prefer whole sugars with a licorice taste, such as muscovado or rapadura, which they like to combine with chocolate, vanilla, caramel or cinnamon in association with light cane sugar. You'll also want to try the chocolate or cereal/coconut and passion juice cookies and the lemon tart, whose lemon cream is made with 50% less sugar than traditional cream.

La Mutinerie 2 rue Bouvier-Sassot, 51120 Sézanne

• To find out more?

No-sugar-added books

• Les Belles Envies, by Alixe Bornon. A diabetic, she has successfully devised an adapted, glycemic index-controlled pastry. Discover her journey and precepts in her book. 208 pages, €18, Éditions Flammarion.
• Sugar-free desserts and pastries by Anissa. Re-learn the art of pastry-making in sixty recipes and, above all, in healthy mode, meaning without refined sugar. 152 pages, 19.95€, Éditions Solar.
• Gâteaux et gourmandises sans sucre by Philippe Conticini & Anne-Sophie Levy-Chambon. 50 recipes, more or less easy to make, with absolutely no added sugar, whatever its source or form. 144 pages, 14.95€, Éditions First.