French Delicacies

Anda Calinici was educated as a psychologist and by trade is a software tester. However, six years ago, she gave up her regular job to pursue her childhood passion: bakery.

România Internațional, 15.09.2013, 08:00

In a small lab in the western city of Cluj Napoca, which very much resembles an old pharmacy, Anda Calinici keeps in small bottles and envelopes lots of wonders that she turns in delicious sweets. Poppy, Valrhorna chocolate, guanaja and the passion fruit, violets, lavender, rose petals, white truffles, raspberry, matcha green tea, Earl Grey, coffee, pink grapefruit jelly, all combined in colours difficult to describe in words. The result carried a French name: macarons. Anda Calinici makes other sweets as well, but it’s the macarons, coloured meringues with creamy and flavoured filling, that have won clients all across the country. It doesn’t even matter that shipping the sweets by courier costs a lot. Anda Calinici definitely does not have time to get bored. We asked her how she decided to give up a safe job to pursue her dream.

Anda Calinici: “As a child I used to love sweets and when I realised I could make them myself, there was only one step left to take. I’m the kind of person who prefers to have no regrets in life. So there came a moment when I said to myself it was the right time I tried and saw if a sweets and pastry business would work. Otherwise I would have wondered my whole life: what if? I was lucky to have around me people that supported me, from my husband to my boss, who promised me he would take me back had the business not worked. When we eventually moved to our own home I could start doing that seriously, because I had enough space, I could by the tools I needed….and this is how it all started.”

Macarons, says Anda Calinici, are like toys for bakers: “You can play with them the way you like. From flavours to shapes, the sky is the limit. They are not difficult to make, but you must be extra careful how you mix the ingredients and keep the right temperature in the room. Otherwise, they are pretty easy to make. “

Anda Calinici brings the ingredients from France and Belgium, although there are some suppliers in Romania as well: “The ingredients I use can be found in Romania as well, but prices are much higher and I prefer to bring them from abroad, to be able to keep my prices low. But as I said there are suppliers in Romania, too, and when people want to make their own macarons at home, I suggest they resort to them. When you just make them once, it doesn’t make sense to import the ingredients.”

Two years ago, Anda Calinici participated in the World Chocolate Masters Championship, where she came in fourth: “I participated in the South and Eastern Europe semifinals alongside competitors from Poland, Slovakia and Turkey. I came in forth among master chocolatiers, people with 10-20 years experience in the field, who studied and trained into the art of chocolate making. The Romanian Registrar of Trades does not even include the trade of chocolatier. I’ve done no training whatsoever. I collaborated with a workshop in Cisnadie, and I believe it is the only workshop in Romania that makes traditional chocolate. I stayed with them from December to February, and I learnt on my own. It’s true that I could use the chocolate melting machines and I could ask people when I did not know what to do.”

Even if she has no formal training, the fourth place at the World Championship has brought her to the attention of Romanian media.

Despite her experience, she is still nervous every time she gets a new client: “Every time I want to know what they liked and what they didn’t like, in order to improve the recipe. I ask for feedback from the people that taste my products. The words they use range from ‘divine’, ‘I didn’t know something like this existed’ to ‘just like in France’. And these words bring me a lot of joy.”

Anda has another dream: to open a small shop where she can welcome her clients herself. We asked her what the shop looks like in her mind: “It’s tiny and smells like freshly baked butter croissants and of good coffee, with macarons in the window, with fresh and new cakes every week. There would only be a few tables covered in chequered cloths. It’s actually a teeny-tiny corner of France.”

If you could taste Anda’s sweets, you would know her dream is not far from turning into reality, because Anda is one of those people who make things happen.