Pastries become new media for Buttermere's Jamie Tung
The Taiwanese-Canadian pastry chef blends Asian flavours and classical techniques at her Vancouve pâtisserie
On her first Halloween in Canada, Buttermere Patisserie founder Jamie Tung dressed up very much like the Ghost Boy from her Spooky Four set. Photo by Leila Kwok.
Buttermere Pâtisserie founder Jamie Tung had never baked a single thing in her life before enrolling in the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts’ pastry program in 2014.
Born in Taiwan, she moved to the West Coast in 2004 at 15 and had completed a communication degree at Simon Fraser University before returning to Asia to work on a travel TV show. A trip to Paris introduced her to the delicious world of classic pastries and led to a career U-turn—even though Tung wasn’t initially convinced that a future in flour was for her.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to love the program, but the more I learned the more I became interested in the science and chemical reactions involved,” Tung tells Stir.
After learning the basics at PICA, Tung moved on to more professional training with her mentor, respected pastry chef Dominic Fortin, then of Whistler’s Bearfoot Bistro. (He’s currently executive pastry chef at Victoria’s Fairmount Empress Hotel and is an ambassador for Cacao Barry.) In addition to taking professional courses in Vancouver and the U.S., Taiwan, Spain, and beyond, she gained further experience at Mosquito, a high-end dessert bar. Tung opened her own shop in 2018, which now has two locations: 958 Main Street (inside Torafuku, where she works out of the kitchen to make wedding and birthday cakes and other large orders and where Buttermere offers pick-up) and 636 Main Street, which is a café that offers drinks and small desserts.
Drawing on her diverse experiences and Vancouver’s multicultural influences, she’s bridging worlds through clever combinations of Asian ingredients and traditional pastry techniques. Consider some of Buttermere’s signature items: lava cakes made with matcha, Vietnamese coffee, or mango; and tea rolls flavoured with matcha, red bean, oolong, Thai milk tea, or houjicha (a roasted Japanese tea); and a sakura roll cake.
In a sense, her degree is still relevant.
“I see myself as a media producer in Buttermere,” Tung says. “I love to create and have a lot of ideas in mind. I love arranging a schedule and having my team work on it together and overseeing the process from start to finish.
“It’s very satisfying when the idea in my head becomes real,” she says, “I really enjoy the process and also the sense of accomplishment.”
The hands and skull are edible in Jamie Tung’s Hauntingly Elegant Skull Cake. Photo by Leila Kwok
With the pastry world evolving constantly, Tung typically travels at least twice a year to learn from some of the best pâtissiers in the world and update her knowledge and skills. (Or at least she did, until COVID-19…) Last year, she worked with the Taiwan Tourism Bureau, shooting three short films, including one about traditional pineapple cakes, which are often given as an engagement present.
While she was growing up in Taiwan, Halloween was not a popular event. Witnessing the annual celebrations unfold in Canada was a good kind of culture shock, she says.
“When I did my first trick or treat in Vancouver, I literally dressed up like one of our Halloween desserts—the ghost boy—with a bed sheet over my head,” Tung says. “I have dressed up as Black Swan, a geisha, female Tarzan, and one Halloween, my friend and I had Roy Lichtenstein-like comic book makeup. Thinking who I want to be on Halloween is very similar to creating a new recipe: the effort of putting some thought into it and being creative.”
To mark Halloween 2020, Buttermere has some ghoulish goodies: Frankenstein is a brain made of strawberry ganache with matcha chiffon, fresh strawberry, and dacquoise; Ghost Boy’s fondant sheet conceals coffee cremeux, brown sugar sponge, and chestnut mousse, while his shoes are made of cookie. Charcoal choux forms the base of Pumpkin Cemetery, which also has kabocha cream and pumpkin meringue along with a vanilla RIP cookie. And Bat & Spiderweb consists of sweet chocolate tart, soft chocolate cake, cherry compote, purple rustic sponge along with marshmallow spiderweb and fondant bats. (These make up the Spooky Four set available for pickup October 28 to 31, $40).
Buttermere’s Hauntingly Elegant Skull Cake is a decadent dessert of chocolate sponge, mandarin- cremeux, cherry sauce, 41% Alunga chocolate mousse, sesame streusel, and graham-cracker crumble. The skull is made of Cacao Berry Belgian chocolate and the hands are made of fondant.
As for Tung’s costume this year? “I love the Netflix Series La Casa de Papel [Money Thief],” she says. “I think I will dress up like Salvador Dali. And make my chocolate skulls at the same time!”
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