Ekaterina Gorbach: a portion of sweets is a daily necessity for me!

Ekaterina Gorbach is a petite but very strong woman who seems to know how to do everything: design outdoor lighting for huge buildings, bake cakes, and teach others about pastry. When we met Katya at the pastry courses, I did not even suppose that in front of me was the winner of the TV show "The Great Baking Tour" channel "1+1". How an energy engineer became a conqueror of biscuits and chocolate - in Ekaterina's story.

And a mom, and a pastry chef

Ekaterina never planned to be a pastry chef. She graduated from the National Aviation University with a specialty in energy engineering, which is not typical for girls, and worked in this field.

The world changed a bit when Katerina had a daughter. While on maternity leave, the young mother became interested in baking, and not just baking, but cake decorating.

The world changed a bit when Katerina had her daughter.

"I saw an American TV show called Cake boss. It showed mastic cakes, just crazy, whole 3-D cake cities! This was 6 years ago and it really impressed me. And then it started! I couldn't sit still, my hands were itching to bake something, to decorate"" says Katerina.

With a young child, it's hard to find a free minute for hobbies, so Katerina got her daughter involved in the process - while she was playing on the table, her mom was nearby sculpting flowers and various mastic decorations. Katerina was so fascinated by this that she even had to attend a master class on decorating. The family shared the hobby - husband Andrew even once burned a coffee grinder, trying to make the necessary 2 kg of powdered sugar from sugar, which, as luck would have it, was not in the stores. At that moment there were no thoughts that a hobby could also bring money - Katya was just doing what she loved to do.

But one day her husband came home from work and told her he'd been fired. Katerina was still on maternity leave and the family was facing financial difficulties. That's when the idea came to her to try baking for a living.

"It was a real hysteria! Every time I gave an order, I was terribly worried about whether I had done everything well and whether the customers would like it," Katerina recalls. At first there were few orders, then more and more: cake, cookies, one after another, and on and on it went.

But Katerina did not dare to change her field of activity radically and after the end of maternity leave she went back to her previous place of work. But she didn't forget about her hobby - she just baked and decorated cakes in her free time, after work. "At 8 am I was already at work, at 18 I came home and baked. I even had my own bookkeeping, I calculated all the costs, the cost of production..." ""There were days when I cooked until 4 am, and one cake I made until 6 am, I didn't even go to bed, and at 8 am I was at work again" - Katya recalls that time.

When there were no orders, she baked sweets for colleagues and friends. Everyone knew about her hobby and when the casting for "The Great Baking Tour" on Ukrainian TV channel "1+1" started, friends and colleagues literally forced Kateryna to fill in the questionnaire.

"Great Baking Tournament"

"I didn't even believe I was going to get a response. Then came with "1+1" another questionnaire, then invited to a skype interview. I was sure that I wouldn't pass, because there were so many applicants, but I was accepted!

The competition was challenging, all the contestants strong and worthy. Filming is not an easy process either. The program was shot in the open-air museum "Pirogovo" and in any weather it was necessary to look good, to create a beautiful picture. Once it was only +10 outside, and the participants had to shoot in light clothes and create a relaxed atmosphere. They had no right to get sick, the slightest cold was swallowed with handfuls of pills, just to hold out.

"Did I think I could win? A couple of times I was sure that I would definitely be cured - I made a lot of mistakes and thought that that was it, I would be kicked out..."" Katerina recalls.

In the finale, contestants were given the task of making a three-tiered wedding cake in 5 hours. A pastry chef from Le Cordon Bleu culinary school (London) was present at the competition. "Cake decorating is my love, I have been doing it for a long time, I knew all the aspects. I prepared a lot of decorations, made a tall cake, decorated it with poppies made of sugar mastic, painted a rushnik. I tried my best and noticed that the pastry chef from the London school spent much more time at my table than at the other participants: he was watching the work closely, evaluating it. Then I got the idea that he liked me better," says Katerina.

When the winners were announced, there was a comical situation. Someone from the crew joked that they would shoot different shots with different winners, and the real winner would be announced later. Katerina believed it, and after she was announced the winner, she continued to believe that they were filming staged shots and it was not real. The realization of victory came only after a couple of minutes, with tears of happiness and joy.

Le Cordon Bleu

Katya talks about Le Cordon Bleu in London with enthusiasm and admiration.

When she first walked into the lobby of the school, she was struck by the beauty of the cakes and sculptures displayed in the windows: they were brilliant works of chocolate, caramel, five-tiered cakes with flowers made of mastic, chocolate, etc.

She was amazed by the beauty of the cakes and sculptures in the windows.

In general, the London and Paris branches of Le Cordon Bleu are radically different. England and France are constantly competing in their approaches to patisserie, tradition, décor and food presentation. The Parisian school is the French classics, entrames, low mousse cakes covered with icing. British confectionery is a completely different approach: high sponge cakes, which are baked in high molds, roughly speaking, in pans, and then glazed with buttercream and covered with either marzipan or mastic. Whereas in France, for example, mastic is not used for decoration at all, only chocolate.

The training was interesting but challenging: the teaching is only in English, first a theory lesson and then practice, where first the chef cooks and the students watch and then they have to repeat the chef's work.

There are about 40 people in the group, and Katya found a Russian-speaking girl from St. Petersburg on the first day. In general, people from all over the world come to study at Le Cordon Bleu: Americans, Canadians, Italians, Chinese.

The teachers are very demanding: all students must be in caps, overdressed, and wearing special shoes. You can only pass between classrooms with a fingerprint pass. There are libraries where a huge amount of literature is collected and students can study topics of interest.

"The hardest thing was parting with my little daughter"" Katerina recalls. At first she didn't even talk to four-year-old Nastya on Skype, as it was a big stress for her daughter and she started crying. Gradually, her daughter got used to seeing her mother only on the computer screen and chatted with her for hours.

Katerina never even allowed the thought of staying in London, she returned to her country to her family: "I learned there and now I can teach someone here". Katerina didn't want to work as a pastry chef either, it's not that interesting to sit in a place and make the same cakes. Now Katerina is a teacher at the DGF International Culinary Concept pastry school. But Katya does not stop there. "The next stage is decorating exhibitions, competitions, championships. It's a completely different level, it's competition between countries.

- I absolutely love sweets, I can't give them up. For me a portion of sweets is a daily necessity.

- The biggest cake I made was a joint project with the bronze world champion in confectionery art Igor Zaritsky - a 160 kg cake. I spent 3 days making the decor for this cake, then 2 days baking the sponge cakes and assembling it directly in the restaurant, as it was unrealistic to transport such a cake.

My personal maximum order is a 6-story cake at 20 pounds.

And by tradition, our hero shares the recipe of his signature dessert with readers. At Catherine's, it's baklava, which she cooked on a TV show.

And traditionally, our hero shares his signature dessert with readers.

Baklava

You will need(for a 35 cm diameter mold):

for the dough:

• 200g butter
• 360g flour
• 200 ml water
• 1 egg
• salt - 3 gr.
• vanilla extract - 5g
.

stuffing:

• 200 gr. walnuts
• 200 g. almonds
• 0.5 tsp. cinnamon
• 50 gr. powdered sugar
• 400g honey
• 0.5 tsp. cardamom

Cooking baklava:

Dough:

Chop 200 grams of butter into 360 grams of flour right on the table surface. Whisk the egg with the salt and vanilla extract. Then add the ice water to the egg and stir. Make a well in the butter and flour mixture and pour in the iced egg mixture and knead the dough quickly. Wrap the dough in cling film and put it in the refrigerator for 2 hours.

filling:

Roast the nuts. Grind the nuts individually in a meat grinder or blender. Add the spices and powdered sugar and mix.

assembly:

Take the dough out of the refrigerator, divide into 6 balls, one should be larger than the others. Roll out the larger ball so that it covers all sides of the mold. Place the rolled out dough on the greased mold. Brush the top with melted butter and scatter the nuts with powdered sugar.

Roll out the second ball of dough according to the diameter of the mold, place it in the mold, brush with melted butter and spread the nuts again. Continue this way until the top layer.

Grease the top layer with beaten egg and then cut into lozenges.

Cut into rhombuses.

Place half of an unroasted walnut on each diamond.

Bake in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes.

Bake in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes.

Take out the finished baklava, pour honey over the top and send it in the oven for another 10-15 minutes.

Bake for another 10-15 minutes.

Happy appetite!

Be happy!