(photo by Lin Min-hsuan)
He made his first crème brûlée when he was in fifth grade. At senior high school, he made apple pies to heal his broken heart when a relationship came to an end. At age 18 he put aside his studies to start his own business. He set up shop at the age of 21. At 24 he closed his flourishing enterprise and went to Taitung to become a volunteer. He is Huang Jie, pâtissier.
Warm some cream, stir it slowly into some melted chocolate, and you get ganache. Leave it to set overnight in the fridge. Next, make a chocolate cake, cherry brandy ganache, and other dainties. An impeccable Black Forest gâteau requires each and every part to be lovingly prepared, layer after layer. It’s hard to imagine, without having seen it for yourself, what a complex task it is to make French-style desserts. Looking at Huang carefully instructing trainees in the intricacies of cake production, I can’t help thinking: “Pâtissiers must be gentle souls by nature.”
All for love
The dessert that launched Huang’s baking life was crème brûlée, which his father taught him to make when he was a fifth-grader at elementary school. Huang was born in Changhua County. When he was just two years old, his mother brought him and his older sister to Taipei to enroll them in a “forest elementary school,” which provided an alternative form of education. As a result, Huang got to see his father only once a month. “My father came to Taipei one day. As soon as he arrived, he said he would teach me to make a crème brûlée.” Watching the dessert gradually shaping up in the oven, for the first time Huang fell under the spell of baking. He remembers fondly that afternoon spent with his father. Although he has eaten more delicious crèmes brulées since then, that sense of warmth is indelible: “For my father it was a way of expressing love. I was learning to make a crème brûlée, and he to be a father.”
In high school, Huang contemplated many career options but never thought of becoming a pastry chef. It wasn’t until he found himself frustrated in love for the first time that he reconnected with pâtisserie.
One day, the broken-hearted Huang happened to pass by his school’s baking classroom. An idea flashed into his mind. Never having had apple pie before, he went to buy the ingredients to try making one. His classmates were lured by the delightful smell. They tasted the pie and their faces beamed with pleasure. Huang felt as if his heart was beginning to heal. That was a eureka moment for him, he says.
(photo by Lin Min-hsuan)
A burst of creativity
Passionate about baking, Huang decided to leave university after his first semester. He used all of his savings to buy an oven and a food mixer, and started a Facebook page called Dessert Diary to share his experiences as a self-taught baker. He also began to sell his handcrafted desserts online, taking the first step toward realizing his dream.
At the age of 20, Huang flew to France in order to acquire a more solid grounding in pâtisserie. When he returned to Taiwan, he and some friends opened Pâtisserie Rivière in Huang’s place in the mountains of New Taipei City’s Xindian District. Despite the remoteness of the locality, large numbers of customers arrived every day, which began to cause inconvenience to local residents. Consequently Huang borrowed a large sum of money and moved Pâtisserie Rivière to Xinyi Road in Taipei City, a vibrant commercial area.
Huang’s creativity has always depended upon a rich emotional capital, from the support of his family to the encouragement of his online fans. He created a chocolate cake called Tobacco Flowers, dedicating it to his father, who had successfully quit smoking. Having grown up in the mountains while attending a forest elementary school, Huang has always been close to nature. So he invented Treefrogs—small matcha cakes topped with marshmallows—to pay tribute to his childhood playmates by the creeks, for these creatures are becoming rare due to pollution. Debris Flow—a Mont Blanc adorned with fragments of bamboo-charcoal meringue and dusted with green-colored chocolate—recalls the road to his old school, which used to be blocked by landslides whenever there was a typhoon.
Overcoming worries
Aided by the popularity of Huang’s Facebook page, Pâtisserie Rivière attracted many customers right from the beginning. This easy success made Huang complacent. Despite arising from good intentions, his insistence on using fair trade cocoa and his request that customers should bring their own containers imposed practical difficulties. After the boom of the initial honeymoon period, Huang often found himself staring blankly at whole shelves of unsold desserts. The pâtissier had yet to become a good business leader. While friends of his age were enjoying themselves, he had to worry about sales figures.
Relentless worries dented Huang’s passion for making desserts. A voice from deep within told him to stop and reflect. Following this voice, he announced to his colleagues that he was taking some leave and set off on a lone around-the-island walk in order to face up to his own shortcomings. When he returned to Pâtisserie Rivière, he felt as if he had been reborn. He created several new desserts and invited artists to stage exhibitions. Sales started to take an upward curve. After half a year, he cleared his remaining debt and started to make a profit.
In May 2018, the day after he paid off the last of his debt, Huang told his colleagues that he wanted to close down Pâtisserie Rivière in April the following year. Huang had set up shop not simply to make money, but to learn to take responsibility and tackle problems. “Once I had achieved these goals, I was satisfied,” says Huang softly, with no trace of regret.
Huang pursues his baking career with conviction and confidence. Passionate and creative, he has breathed life into each and every one of his scrumptious works. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)
Baking a sweet companionship
Prior to the closure of Pâtisserie Rivière, Huang had made 200 desserts and sent them as Christmas presents to Kids’ Bookhouse in Taitung. He was invited to demonstrate his craft there, which unexpectedly led to a much longer stay: after closing down his shop, he moved to Taitung to become a volunteer.
Huang even thought of opening a charity pastry shop in Taitung, where children who didn’t wish to go to university could acquire professional skills. But before long he dropped the idea. Some children were playing with their phones during the lessons. Some arrived at the kitchen in shorts and flip-flops. Huang felt very frustrated.
However, he has come to realize that while adults may be keen to teach, children do not necessarily want to learn. He says that what children in cultural backwaters really need is companionship. Instead of blaming the children for not living up to his own aspirations for them, he came to adopt a more positive, friendlier approach, seeking to understand their lives and their visions for the future. Sharing his own story with them, he wanted to encourage them to explore various possibilities in life.
Curiously, after Huang had jettisoned his didactic persona, the children started to wear proper trousers and shoes to class, arriving early to make preparations. They began to enjoy learning pâtisserie. On the last day of the course, the children presented a card to Huang—they were sad to see him go. Huang read it in tears. He says that it will all have been worth it if one day these children look back on those nine months and feel that someone has loved and cared about them.
Believing in intuition
Aged 18 when he left university, 21 when he set up shop, and 24 when he closed his business to volunteer in Taitung, Huang says smilingly: “For me, it’s harder to decide what to eat next than whether or not to reopen my shop next year.” Huang’s courage to pursue his dreams didn’t come from nowhere. It has much to do with his parents, who have always given him freedom and trust. If you phoned your mother and told her you wanted to drop out of university, you would probably expect to be scolded. When Huang did this, however, what his mother said was: “As long as you’ve thought it through, you have my full support.” The schools Huang attended—Seedling Experimental Elementary School and Holistic Education School—were unconventional, aiming to give their students plenty of opportunities to make their own choices, and encouraging them to perform on stage, to join hobby groups, to dance, and so on. These many explorative activities enriched Huang’s life and nourished his creativity.
After finishing his voluntary work in Taitung in February 2020, Huang set out again to embrace all possibilities. He has been exposing himself to new ideas, learning to make bread, and mending his relationship with his father by touring Taiwan with him on foot. He has also published a book to share his story. When asked about his next plan, he shrugs and says nothing is settled. But it’s very likely that he’ll open another shop.
Adept at communicating with his fans through social media, Huang hopes that his story will inspire young people to trust their own intuition: the future may be unpredictable, but you’ll be amazed what it has to offer.
