The ‘lightness’ touted by Borja García, founder and chef of Akita Foods, a Japanese patisserie in Madrid, has nothing to do with diets. His approach, he explains, comes from the concept he learned in Japan, where he spent fifteen years discovering its secrets. His first revelation is a ‘Japanese version’ of the “mont blanc”. ‘In France, it has a lot of sugar and fat. We have refined the dessert. What is its essence? we asked ourselves. So, we removed things in search of it. We did away with the meringue. How? We make a crunchier sponge cake, so we don't need to use it’, García confesses at Pastry Madrid Fusión.

‘To work on it, we had to learn how the Japanese used red bean paste, which is very traditional in old-fashioned pastries served with tea’, he continues in his presentation “Japanese pastries: the pastries of the air”. ‘We try to make it very dry, like mashed potatoes, so that it absorbs the rest of the ingredients. With this paste, which we finish cooking, we achieve an emulsion with a little butter, rum and cream. The Japanese version is not dairy-based; it tastes like chestnuts. It changes a lot’.

Delicately plated and decorated with flowers, the “mont blancs” are praised by the audience who taste them on Tuesday morning. ‘The lightness is experienced by all five senses. It's not “light” food, nor is it about taking things away. In Japanese pastry-making, it's about giving things air... not covering them up. You remove what is not necessary. In the end, we look for much more pleasant textures, so that the customer wants to eat it more often’, explains García. ‘Because here we hear a lot of people saying they don't like sweet things. The fault lies with European pastry chefs, who add so much sugar. We don't make desserts just to make them tasty. We design them to achieve lightness in texture, flavour, and appearance. We remove sugar and fat, which makes them lighter’.