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Well, hello and welcome first of all to this absolutely glorious British day, but also welcome to Fin Salt and Sweet. I'm here with the wonderful Adrien Ramirez. Hi. Who is the head of pastry for the last what, eight years? Yeah, eight long years, honey. This is one of the best bakeries in London. If you follow them on Instagram, you will know that they are known for their ice cream sandwiches in the summer. Currently, they are rocking princess cakes at the weekend. We're going to get a bit more involved in that jazz. Adrian, hi. Not from these parts. No, not at all. So, I grew up in Southern California and then I lived in San Francisco for many years when I was a trained dancer. Oh,
that's handy in the bakery cuz you know you can like whirl around people. Yes. Body synchronized. Yes. So my entire life I've been sort of like really obsessed with past pastry and baking and I thought I might do it as a career but then I became a dancer. I moved here to be a dancer moved back to San Francisco started working at Tartine. I worked with Chad Robertson and with Richard Hart and lots of like really amazing bakers and it sort of like reignited my passion for baking. So then I moved to London and I started working at a place called Violet. Yeah, you know it's been on a bakery tour. also worked there for a bit. Kind of informed my style of baking now, which is like, you know,
very focused on seasonality and using like really great ingredients. But pretty much everything has been learned on the job with a lot of trial and a lot of error. You don't learn unless you make lots of mistakes. How do you get your dancing needs met? You could probably ask my staff. Like you could probably ask my bakers like they I'm always shaking ass. I have noticed on your Instagram uh there's quite a lot of uh poses, constantly throwing ass, dropping it like it's hot, like it's it's a must. I think that's the key to a successful bakery is when people know how to drop it like it's hot. Let's talk princess cakes. I went on a trip to Los Angeles.
I had sort of seen Hannah Ciskin cakes. She's amazing. And I was staying in the neighborhood as Quarter Sheets, the pizza place where she bakes all of her cakes. And I had her princess cake and it was revvely life-changing cake. and I wanted to bring that here cuz I didn't see anybody selling it. So, took a lot of inspiration from that and we now kind of changed the flavor seasonally. We started with kind of more traditional with ML cherry and raspberry jam and during rhubarb season we moved to a rhubarb jam with the cardamom creme diplomat and so it's fun. We change it up a bit. What is a princess cake? So, a princess cake is um well, the way we do it is three layers of like a chiffon
sponge, um a creme diplomat, um a jam, and then it's topped off with marapon whipped cream and then topped with some marzipan. And is it traditionally with mascapony or do you use that to stabilize it? I use it to stabilize it. I love marcapony with whipped cream. Creates a great texture and it does have more oomph. So, what can people expect? Well, things are all about to kind of switch up because we're about to open our bakery within like the next two months. Amazing. Yeah. So, right now we're like currently like deep in the throws of like vinazery trials and um bread trials and we'll start doing like really beautiful pastries and danishes and that's going to be really exciting.
For right now, your average kind of like day, you'll have like at least three cake slices. Our buttermilk banana bread, which is like really heavily spiced. There's always our chocolate vegan espresso cake. We're quite known for our sandwiches. Adrian was telling me they roast about 90 chickens a week here. Yeah, it's kind of sandwiches, which is very harrowing. So, the princess cake is a three-day process. As much as we love it here, we can't stay over 3 days. So, Nikki behind the camera is going to go along with Adrian to the bakery and see a little bit of how the princess cake is made as well as meet the team. I am just going to buy a load of delicious baked goods and eat them for you. So, I'll be back after that.
order? Just a perfectly reasonable order for a what is this? Thursday morning. Wow. Z. Here I am outside in the sun and I've only got a couple of things. 1 2 3 4 5 6 seven. Seven items. We've got a bit of everything here. Okay, we've got their famous banana bread and we've got this beautiful pink and white angel baby cake. What should I start with? Let's go with that. It's going to look really cute on this plate, which also matches my socks sort of. Adrian said this was vanilla vibes but with a raspberry topping. Oh, and it also had a bit of almond through a sponge. Let's um try and get the full works in the bite. M.
It was too much in my mouth. I should have been more demure. Really nice. Really subtle almond flavor. Is that a buttercream? Really subtle tang from the raspberry. And also makes it such a beautiful color. Delicious. M. Oh, I just got another bit of almond in the filling bit. The filling. I think there's almond in there. That's delish. It reminds me of a batenburg, but in a good way. Feel like I should go Should I go turnover? When you're watching this, it might be slightly past rhubarb season. We have a couple of rhubarb things on here. We've got this rhubarb gallette here, which is lovely. And then this rhubarb and custard turnover thing. The pastry is
flaky. I'm going to need a more delicate touch to my sort of violent hands. Adrian uses a kind of flaky pastry rather than a puff pastry. When he makes it, he keeps loads of butter in it and then he cuts it into four and then stacks those on top of each other. A little bit like American style biscuits to keep all those like layers of butter. So it's not like a puff pastry. We got flakes. I'm liking this uh rhubarb to custard ratio. Let me just try this filling because it's going to all ooze out anyway. M. Ooh. Wow. It's like um I think it's like a diplomat, but then we've got the rhubarb in there which is super tangy and it's got that like unmistakable rhubarb twang. I'm going to need to bite it. I'm actually quite
scared that we're going to like lose half the filling around my face and the floor, but I'll do my best, guys. I mean, not so dear. M. Yummy. That pastry is so buttery and like a really delicious sweet kind of butter. That's really tasty. We've got such a lovely crunch on the top. Looks like they sprinkled a bit of derura sugar on the top. Perfectly cooked all the way through. Got delicious flakes. I'm going to struggle not to eat this whole thing to be honest, even though I've got all this going on. But I will stop. Oh, that is so nice. I'm not done with my rhubarb. I need more. I think you should make the most of rhubarb season. A little bit like asparagus season, which is over so
quickly. It's very sad. I feel like this might be a pick it up and sort of slap it in kind of number. Oh, what is this? This is a rhubarb gallette. And again, I think it uses the same pastry. Oo, that's so good. Not as sweet as the last one cuz that's really rhubarb. So, we've got all that lovely sourness. We got a bit of sweetness over here, though. Oh, nicker. Sunnyside down. It's a travesty. The pigeons don't deserve this. We move, people. And I've got all of this stuff to look forward to. So, I'm not going to get too sad about that little catastrophe cuz I also still have half of it left. And actually, it's the bit I like the most cuz it's got all
the pastry on it. What next? Let's try their banana bread. Oh, that has got some squid on it. Really, really lovely flavors in there. And he was saying they put cardamom in it, which is really nice. I don't I've never heard of any other banana breads with cardamom. It's just not It's not the tradition. So, squid. You got a decent squid. It's hefty slice. I mean, it's a lot. Like, no one's going to be saying there wasn't enough. Oh my god. I don't think I've ever met a banana bread I don't like. The spices are like super delicate. It's not in your face. You know how sometimes a banana bread can be really cinnamony and just a bit over the top. This is just really nice. Actually
more banana heavy. So moist and squidgy. I would like this toasted. I think that's one of the best things you can do with a banana bread other than just eat it. Yeah, that's really nice. There's no nuts in it, I don't think. And that's okay, too. The bananas be singing. This is de delightful. It's getting too hot out here, guys. It's getting way too hot. Well, should we have the Guinness cake with the cream cheese icing? I remember back in the day Guinness cupcakes with cream cheese icing was one of the first sort of other flavors of cupcakes that I made. You can taste the Guinness, which
is kind of rare, actually, cuz that's that's good. Especially if you like Guinness. M goodness. I mean, it's all going off here. Anyway, back to this cake. The icing is really nice and sweet. Not too cream cheesy. Tastes more like a vanilla buttercream. But the cake itself so stouty and so yummy. And again, heft. We've only got two left. Two. I don't know what we're going to do. So, the first one is I think it was it a peanut butter and miso? And it's got a lovely blonde chocolate klette nibble knob. Noble. And lots of salt, which is important in any cookie, but especially like peanuty ones. M. Yummummer. Oh my gosh, guys. The chew on that is fit. That's so good. Perfect balance of a little bit of chew, a little tiny bit of crisp,
ever so slightly underbaked in the middle, which is how I like it. And really salty and you're getting all that misoy umaminess, which goes really well with the peanut butter. I'm not going to eat all that because I am going to save that for my ride home. I actually can't remember what this was. It's got chocolate, maybe some rye. Let's just try and do it on smell alone. Am I that good? No, I mean, let's just call it a chocolate cookie and I will put the correct name on the screen now. Oh, okay. Bit more snappy, but not like crispy snap. And there's tons of chocolate in there. It's It's almost more chocolate than cookie. M. This is a little bit more almost like I mean it's not shortbreddy, but it's got a little shortness to it. A
little crumbliness. I really like completely different kind of cookie to that cuz that one's quite chewy. Whereas this one's like a really classic chocolate chip cookie. Unapologetically chocolatey and salty. Delicious. Oh my goodness. Well, I'm stuffed, but I'm going to be even more stuffed on the train home. Thank you so much for joining me here at ThinkX. I do hope you take yourself off there. Now, they've got a couple of other locations. We'll put that all in the description box below. Make sure you're following them on Instagram, checking out what they do. Make sure you're checking out Adrian's Instagram, Gigella. But thank you so much for joining me on this glorious
day. Nikki and I are now going to go and put on some after sun, maybe also some sunscreen because we've still got a bit of work to do. But I hope you have enjoyed this. And if there's anywhere else you'd like me to visit, please let me know in the comments below. If it's not too far away, I'll do my best. Uh, love you guys. Bye.
