a pastry engineer’s lament

If dough is the nut

(round, risen, secretly tender),

and éclairs are the bolts

(sleek choux barrels brimming with custard resolve),

then washers must be flat wafers of caramel snap,

kissed round by the mould of a biscuit cutter,

slid neatly between chew and cream

to keep the whole assembly from unravelling into chaos.

We work in torque and teaspoons here,

tightening sugar-threads ‘til they sing under tension,

aligning layers so the ganache runs in straight,

clean rivulets — the plumbing of a dream.

And when at last the blueprint is eaten,

every nut, bolt, and wafer gone,

we sweep the table free of crumbs and find

we’ve built nothing that will last

except the memory of how sweet structure can be.

👨🏻‍🍳👩🏻‍🍳🥖