People's Daily December 17, 2021 Screenshot of page 12
Pictured here is Haenle and his chocolate flip cake.
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Original title: Han Lei, a sugar cake maker in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, uses food as the medium——
Exquisite craftsmanship, ingenious integration (telling the Chinese story well)
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On the one hand, there are traditional Chinese cultural elements such as face, embroidery, blue and white porcelain, and on the other hand, cake making techniques derived from the West, which are skillfully integrated in the hands of sugar cake maker Han Lei. With exquisite skills, Han Lei uses food as a medium to bring Chinese culture to the world stage.
Tang Sancai horse, secret color porcelain lotus bowl, cloisonné vase... The variety of exhibits makes people feel like you are in a small folk museum, and it is surprising that they can all be eaten.
That's right, they're all cakes made from flip sugar (a kind of fudge, often used to decorate pastries) and chocolate, and the design author is Han Lei, a sugar cake maker in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Han Lei, 36 years old this year, he is exquisite, the Traditional Chinese cultural elements and sugar turning skills skillfully integrated, participated in 8 international competitions, won more than 10 world championships, the "Chinese style" sugar cake to the world, for more people to appreciate and taste.
Do something different than Western pastry chefs have ever done
"Is this also a cake?" Can cakes still do that? In 2001, when he happened to see a photo of a chocolate-shaped cake, 16-year-old Han Lei was amazed and had the idea of making a cake in his heart.
After arriving at baking school, Han Lei learned from the most basic mounted cake. Out of his inner love and personal efforts, he became a teaching assistant at the age of 17 and began to lead classes at the age of 18. Four years later, the school set up a research and development center, and Haenle did not hesitate to choose the direction of "chocolate and sugar".
Sugar cake originated in the United Kingdom, after a long period of development, in addition to the emphasis on taste to increase the decorative features, more and more people into this field, to create a unique sugar turning work. Since its development, sugar cake has become a cultural and creative product.
At that time, there was no ready-made experience in China to replicate how to make a sugar cake, and the research and development process was full of challenges. To make a sugar cake, you must first develop a sugar cake. "According to the recipe in the textbook, the raw materials include frosting, starch, gelatin, etc., but they are always clumpy and brittle." Han Lei recalled that in order to make the dough dry a little slower, he tried to add syrup and glycerin, but the effect was not good, and finally he added a thickener, in order to adjust the most appropriate proportion, weighed a microgram on the scale a thousand times.
Once, when making a sugar cake with the theme of "Chocolate Park", Han Lei thought that he could choose some traditional Chinese cultural elements to embellish and make it with good results. After this successful attempt, he began to brew: to do something different than Western pastry chefs have ever done.
"I've loved opera since I was a child, and I'm also very interested in related costumes and props." Han Lei thought, why not integrate these beautiful and exquisite traditional cultural elements into the sugar cake, so that Chinese and Western cultural elements can be skillfully integrated through food?
In order to make cakes, learn the skills of brush strokes, paper cutting, clay sculpture and so on
When the chocolate is dried, it exudes a luster of pottery or copper, and the shiny turning sugar is more like porcelain, and Han Lei uses these two ingredients to express the elements of traditional Chinese culture, while mixing the two ingredients together to create the rich details of the puppet's face in the opera.
Different ingredients have different storage conditions. Han Lei said that the most difficult thing in the production process is to grasp the temperature and humidity, and once the control is not good, it will be abandoned.
"Chocolate is not resistant to high temperatures, and it will turn white above 20 degrees Celsius and melt and deform at about 30 degrees Celsius." Han Lei introduced that it is most appropriate to take the method of pure sculpture to make bronze shapes. Because chocolate is afraid of heat, and the temperature of the hand is high, when kneading the overall shape, you must control the hand temperature to operate. To this end, Han Lei always stands directly below the air conditioner when creating, and controls the temperature of the hand with air conditioning. Every time you pinch it, you put your hand in ice water and soak it for a while. But the temperature requirements of carving are just the opposite, because chocolate is easier to soften and fuse when the temperature is higher, so he often gently heats it with his hand while carving.
A method similar to "opposite" is also used to turn sugar. "Turning sugar can't withstand a lot of water, so I try to draw it a small amount of times, first with a pale color base, and then deepen it over and over again until it superimposes the desired color." Han Lei said that the characteristics of turning sugar on the surface of the water will melt also bring inspiration to himself, which is used to express the gradient and blending of blue and white porcelain, which can achieve the effect of fake and real.
Over the years, Han Lei has taught himself sketching, brush drawing, paper cutting, clay sculpture... "Learning so many skills is actually to make cakes better." Han Lei has a cake work whose shape is "embroidered shoes", in order to make the "embroidered" silk thread look more layered, he not only bought embroidered shoes as a reference, but also went to the embroidery workshop to learn.
"I took apart the embroidered shoes one thread at a time and studied the direction of each stitch." Han Lei said that the existing powdered sugar pulled out of the silk thread is not thin enough, they are repeatedly sieved, and then each layer, each line point is adjusted to a different gradient color, the three-dimensional sense comes out at once.
The cake is infused with Chinese cultural elements such as embroidery and blue and white porcelain
At the 2015 Tokyo Cake Show in Japan, Haenle took his "Chinoiserie" cake to the world stage for the first time. This cake made by combining face shaping techniques incorporates 10 Chinese cultural elements such as face, embroidery, blue and white porcelain, and peony flowers, and stands out among many entries. In the end, his work won the highest prize in the competition.
Since then, Han Lei's "Chinese style" cake has won many awards in international competitions. In 2019, at the World Dessert, Ice Cream and Chocolate Champions Cup held in Italy, Han Lei, as the head coach of the Chinese team, led a team of 3 people, after more than a month of planning and training, in the 8-hour on-site production, won the Best Modeling Award and the Best Media Award with the large-scale chocolate sculpture "Sun Wukong".
For Haenle, winning international competitions is exciting, as is cultural exchanges on the world stage. "In addition to large-scale works, we will also reflect a strong 'Chinese style' in every accessory and detail." For example, the patterns sprayed on the cake and the seals in the candy give the work a unique and lifelike temperament.
If you want to be different, you have to work your taste. Over the years, Han Lei and his team have tried to add star anise, pepper and other seasonings to the dough, developed a "strange flavor of sugar cake", and also developed new flavors such as "flower flavor" and "tea flavor", and constantly innovated the taste expression of sugar cake.
"The more national, the more worldly." Haenle firmly believes this. Today, Haenle devotes a lot of time and energy to teaching skills. In recent years, he has brought out 3 "post-00" world champions. He always shares the formulas, innovative materials and processes he develops without reservation, hoping to cultivate more local sugar cake makers, so that the "Chinese style" will be loved by more people, and the craftsman spirit embodied in the sugar turning technology will continue to be passed on.