Claire Saffitz the Baking Queen!

Claire Saffitz, the queen of gourmet makes!This chef has had many accomplishments over the years including cookbooks, interviews, and an impressive fanbase for running the awesome web-series: Gourmet Makes!Now if you aren’t familiar with one of the most beloved video-series on youtube, Gourmet makes is a show that features Claire Saffitz. She’s working hard to reverse-engineer your favorite junk foods and snacks but in a more gourmet way! It’s an awesome show and you should give it a watch if you have the time😊but back to Claire.She was a senior associate food editor for Bon Appetit, a well-known food magazine, but recently turned to free-lance recipe development while maintaining a contract working as the host of Gourmet Makes.Watching her youtube series really lets you get a taste of how she goes about her projects; if you enjoy her videos maybe consider pre-purchasing her new book coming in October: Dessert Person!Along with that she had been constantly recipe testing with the Bon Appetit magazine company and making multiple videos other than Gourmet Makes guiding aspiring chefs like me in the right direction😊.

This awesome chef wasn’t always headed towards the world of culinary arts. Claire had actually graduated from Harvard with a degree in American history and literature. Not knowing what to do next she decided to take a gap year by attending culinary school in Paris. This led to her discovery of her passion for cooking and baking and so she completed a master's course on history at McGill and ventured off into the culinary world. Claire had always been the shy, studious kid in school. She hated change, followed rules, never wanted the spotlight, yet she is one of the biggest youtube influencers in this time.The opportunity to film these videos really skyrocketed her success and made her known in the world which was quite the opposite of what she expected!Nonetheless, this is why people love her so much! Her relatable timid personality and on camera frustrations is such a mood that everyone finds so entertaining.

Claire really is about working to be her best and giving out only the best to others but that doesn’t mean she’s perfect. Though she tries to be perfect she encounters failure just as much as the average Joe. Especially since her Gourmet Makes show began, she has been learning to deal with failure and continue moving on changing her life motto as she goes.One of her biggest takeaways from becoming a chef and running Gourmet Makes was that you just have to trust yourself and understand when something is good enough because“You can endlessly test a recipe and tweak it and never feel like it’s done”.From watching her interviews and videos to reading her recipes it’s very evident that there are many life lessons that can be learned through the process of baking and cooking.For me, it’s important to keep that in mind, I often get down when a recipe fails rather than analyzing my mistakes and working towards a goal but I’ve really been inspired by Claire’s determination to create the gourmet version of many snacks. She really has inspired and entertained many people across the globe with her relatable frustrations and steadfast determination.

Salted Caramel Chocolate Tart

This recipe is such a showstopper, it looks impressive and the flavor combinations are so good together. When I first read this recipe I really thought it would be too overpoweringly sweet with all the caramel filling but when I tasted it I realized that all the components worked together to balance each other out and bring different flavors out from each other. The bittersweet ganache with the salty-sweet caramel and the flaky shortbread crust all worked to become a beautiful dessert. The most difficult part of this dish was making the caramel as I am a terribly impatient person. The process of making caramel is basically letting sugar and water dissolve and boil for along period of time with no stirring at all. I absolutely hate to wait and want to stir everything I can and so this was difficult for me personally. Along with that, the caramelization of the sugar happens very fast once it begins and so it’s very difficult, especially without much experience, to gauge out when to pull the caramel off the stove and when to keep cooking it. In the future, I would bake the tart shell a little longer as the center had been a little undercooked for me but other than that there are no complaints! This seriously is going to wow your guests and when paired with ice cream it’ll bring the dish to the next level.