Albert Adrià, chef and master cakemaker, and David Gil, pastry chef and head of Innovation at I+Desserts, are two geniuses of their trade who presented ‘Candy’ at Fusión Pastry, a desserts bible. This is the book by the elBarri pastry house setting out the magic of desserts that made an era. It comes in two volumes, and addresses seasonality, neoclassicism, sweets and the iced world.

This is a “distillate” of the sweet cuisine created at the elBarri restaurants between 2011-2021. A gastronomic funfair composed of Tickets, Bodega 1900, Hoja Santa, Pakta and Enigma. For Adrià and Gil - alma mater and head of pastry at elBarri,
respectively, the book represents a pause in their careers that enables them to take a look back, assess their success, and rethink the objectives ahead.

In a mixed format, one volume contains photographs of desserts, along with a short explanation of the concept so that the images speak for themselves. There are also recipes, with details on how each dessert is made. “It’s been ten years in the making. It’s the only memory that will remain of elBarri, and David Gil is the guilty party for this book”, said Adrià during the presentation at Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España. “We compiled ten years’ work, and this is the best way to ensure that the knowledge isn’t condemned to oblivion”, said Gil, adding that the restaurants’ server “burned out and thousands of recipes were lost”. 

Fruit 

Seasonality means fruit, which marks every era, and so the first part contains recipes featuring oranges, strawberries, pineapple, figs, with an interminable fruit etcetera. “Neoclassicism means putting knowledge and technique at the service of taste”, says Adrià of the second part. He adds that “one of ElBarri’s ten commandments is a stand for classic desserts reinvented with less sugar”. This means that each fruit is subject to this concept, with aesthetic notions always justified, but “with more freshness and lightness”. It is with “logic as an advisor” that they recreate lemon cake, cheese cake and carrot cake. The sweets section includes a “polvorón” powder cake with an ice cream filling, or crème caramel – “the toughest challenge” – cooked at low temperature.

“To be creative you need money, money and money to buy space, time and the team. You can’t do all that in a day. Avant-garde is a military term for those who march at the front and have a good chance of being killed”, says Adrià, creator of most of the techniques, and an advocate of “honesty”. “There’s no such thing as easy or difficult – it’s routine that turns a pastry chef into a master pastry chef”. “A small good dessert is twice as good”, he adds before Gil moved on to make three desserts: a fake risotto with orange rice, using nitrogen to obtain grains of orange with inulin, an agave fibre, which he gels; he reinvented blueberry pie with a creamy “sable” (biscuit paste), a blueberry sorbet with a Modena vinegar marinade, cream of yoghurt and thyme oil; and finally, he used coconut milk and chocolate to recreate the traditional skillet flowers cooked with liquid nitrogen.

“There are two kinds of cooking, good and bad, and here we try to do the good kind”, summed up Adrià. “With more technique there are more possibilities, and we want to tell everyone who reads this book not to worry too much about the recipes, to use them as their own, and pursue what we were pursuing at elBarri and are still pursuing – making others happy”. 

Miquel Guarro makes a stand for the sensuality of pastrymaking 

Sensuality is the watchword for Miquel Guarro Carreras, (Piera, Barcelona, 1989). He is passionate about chocolate, and is now a total wizard with this sweet centenary substance. He knows that pastrymaking “is not necessary to live”, but wants “us to live it out”.

Guarro plies his trade with a modern, elegant style brimming over with creativity. He also knows that pastry “brightens up life”, even though he admits that “healthy pastry is an oxymoron”. “If you eat cake, go for a run the day after”, advises this King Midas of chocolate, for whom “sensuality and sexiness” are two of his aspirations.

He understands sensual as “suggesting sensations”, and “the intense necessity to convey pleasure”. “Pastry must be visual, make people come back, and shun vulgarity. It must be tasty and leave some room for surprises, it has to tell a story and be fun”, says Guarro as part of his pastry decalogue.

He regrets that cakemakers “shoot ourselves in the foot by saying that there’s too much sugar, for example”. “If we say that pastry isn’t healthy, we’re finished. Modern pastry is made with brains and art, and it’s not all about trying to bring things down to zero sugar”.
“We have to make pastry that says things, and speak out for the trade beyond calories”, says the creator of the 'Dark side of the moon' cake, black chocolate and whisky, and sensual basil and lemon tarts “without a single colorant”. 

“We’ve lost our freshness in pastrymaking. We’re artisans and our missions is to seduce”, Guarro insists before creating a cake which is cocoa bean with “Magdalena” sponge, Yucatan chocolate, almond praline, caramel, a lot of vanilla and “moscovado” brown sugar cream.

His beginnings were at the Barcelona Guild's Cakemaking School, while also working at Pastelería Targarona (in Igualada) and at Bubó, a leading pastrymaker in Barcelona. He also worked at the prestigious Frank Fresson pastry outlet in Metz, and for three years he was Pastry Chef at the Dos Cielos restaurant in Barcelona, where he began to seek his own way in the world of sweetness.

Guarro took the gold trophy at the Barcelona Guild’s Chocolate Figures Competition, and in 2013 he became the youngest ever winner of the Lluís Santapau Trophy, making him Best Master Chocolatemaker. In the same year, Guarro joined the team at Chocolate Academy BCN – a pioneer in professional training – as pastry chef and lecturer.

Along with Ramon Morato, Josep Maria Ribe and Raul Bernal, he co-authored the book 'Four in One En los límites del chocolate', and forms part of the “21º Brix” association, an entity seeking to develop and publicise artisan pastrymaking.