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Interview
barney griffiths - 2 October 2016 2.00 h

The art of sugarcrafting

Patricia Schmidt Every Friday afternoon on El Punt Avui Televisió, Barney chats with an English-speaking expat. For this month's interview he had a chat with 'sugarcrafter' Patricia Schmidt, from Pastisseria Escribà.
- barney griffiths
You are orig­i­nally from Sao Paulo, right? Can you tell us a lit­tle bit about the city?
Sao Paulo is the biggest city in Brazil, we have 25 mil­lion peo­ple, so it's a huge city.
When did you live in Sao Paulo and did you come here straight away?
I left Sao Paulo in 2010. Yes, I came here di­rectly be­cause I fell in love in 2009 with a great baker and pas­try chef from Cat­alo­nia, who is my hus­band now. It was all due to local prod­ucts here that I wanted to rep­re­sent in Brazil to serve my clients and then we fell in love.
What about Cat­alo­nia, what about liv­ing here?
I like every­thing here, I like the way Cata­lans see things; they have no lim­its for cre­at­ing and I find they have an avant-garde way of think­ing.
What lan­guages do you use with your hus­band and in your daily life?
We speak a lit­tle bit of every­thing: a lit­tle bit of Span­ish, I'm learn­ing Cata­lan, he is also learn­ing a lit­tle bit of Por­tuguese, it's a mix­ture of all these lan­guages. It's like a lan­guage we have cre­ated our­selves.
What about your Eng­lish? Where did you get your Eng­lish from?
I was an ex­change stu­dent when I was 15 years old, and then I started study­ing Eng­lish. In my ex­change pro­gramme, which lasted nine months, I went to a tiny city close to New York City called New­field, I think there were about 850 in­hab­i­tants or some­thing like that.
Did you say that you've been in Eng­land?
Yes, study­ing cakes and cake dec­o­rat­ing. It is quite big there.
You said that you are a cake dec­o­ra­tor or a “sug­ar­crafter”. How did that first come about, how did all of this start for you?
When I lived in the United States, the Amer­i­can thing is to buy things and make pretty cakes at home. I thought that maybe I hadn't seen that be­fore in Brazil, so thought that I could do that in my coun­try. But when I ar­rived, we didn't have all the tools and every­thing, so I thought that maybe I would study first, fin­ish a de­gree and then af­ter­wards I would in­ves­ti­gate. That's what I did: I fin­ished ad­ver­tis­ing, but the thing I wanted to do was cake dec­o­rat­ing, so I began mak­ing them for friends, like every­one who starts, and then I de­cided to begin study­ing it and that's why in 2000 I went to a town called Darien, close to Chicago, to the Wilton School of Cake Dec­o­rat­ing. I did a cou­ple of courses in pas­try mak­ing and then in “sug­ar­craft­ing”.
Then you started your own busi­ness? How did that go?
Yes, it went very well. Brazil­ians like big par­ties and in­vest­ing in mak­ing the party big­ger than your friend's one. For that you al­ways have to get new tech­niques and new prod­ucts.
It was per­fect for you then. I was think­ing about cup­cakes, but I think you go fur­ther than just dec­o­rat­ing cup­cakes, don't you?
I like to make every­thing in sugar, from mod­el­ling fig­ures to flow­ers. I work with some tools, cut­ters, for ex­am­ple, and then I paint them with ed­i­ble paint.
Is it ex­pen­sive to make some­thing like that? Is it just sugar or is there some­thing else in­volved?
Yes, I work with dif­fer­ent sorts of gums, sugar and noth­ing else, but it takes a lot of time be­cause you make them, then they have to dry, then the next day they have to be painted, then they have to dry again and then you can as­sem­ble them.
Do you do this for wed­dings here in Cat­alo­nia?
Yes, mostly for for­eign­ers, many Rus­sians and so on.
Why do you think that is?
I think be­cause it is not very cheap, be­cause of the time it takes, the skills you must have and also the colours that I use, some of which are from Eng­land, so you have to order them from there, and so I think that it is mostly be­cause of the price.
You work in the Es­cribà pas­try shop. Are you part of the setup? Do you work with your hus­band?
In some pro­jects we have worked to­gether. I have a sec­tion that works with the British way of dec­o­rat­ing cakes.
You said that this is your work but also your hobby. And you like trav­el­ing too. Tell us a lit­tle about it.
My hus­band's and my favourite way of trav­el­ling is to go to a coun­try we have never been to be­fore and visit pas­try shops, where we eat and learn. We've been in Aus­tria, where we had the op­por­tu­nity to go to the Demel shop, where they serve the Sisi pas­try. They have a re­ally dif­fer­ent taste for things and a dif­fer­ent way of mak­ing them.
Is there any coun­try that sur­prised you be­cause it had a higher level of pas­try mak­ing or dec­o­rat­ing cakes than you imag­ined?
Yes, in Is­tan­bul. I never imag­ined that they were so ad­vanced with cakes and syrups.
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