This Caracas pastry shop became renowned for its chocolate-covered profiterole cake made with Venezuelan cocoa, a unique recipe in the world devised by its founder.
The Mozart pastry shop celebrated its 47th anniversary this week, and to celebrate this new anniversary, on its Instagram account @pasteleriamozart they remembered its founder, the Greek master pastry chef and chocolatier Georges Progonis, and the cake that made this place famous in Caracas, the of profiterole.
Died in 2010, his family, wife, daughters and grandchildren, maintain the legacy that this Greek confectioner and chocolatier left with some of his gastronomic inventions, among them, the profiterole, whose cream is made with a unique recipe devised by him, and which It doesn't have much to do with the original created in France many decades ago.
Mozart and her profiterole cake
The harsh economic consequences of the war in Europe, and because Venezuela is one of the producers of the best cocoa in the world, with a fine aroma and flavor, were at least two of the reasons that led Progonis to change his life and travel to Caracas with little money in his pocket, alone and without knowing how to speak any Spanish.
But his skills in the area of pastry and chocolate, which he had learned since he was 12 years old in his native Greece (his parents and grandfather were pastry chefs and chocolatiers), helped him get a job in a pastry shop in the city, whereby fate of life meets Doris, his future wife and partner in their own cake and chocolate business, which they would set up together years after hard work and savings in a small shop in the Concresa Shopping Center, east of the city of Caracas, in the municipality Baruta, on April 26, 1975, which they called Mozart Pastry.
Although the idea of this name did not occur to Progonis, but to a former Austrian partner, that is what she called her first cake made with her own recipe that she later changed to profiterol, which she began to offer 6 months after opening her first establishment, and that from the first moment it became the most sold, making this place famous.
This puff pastry-based profiterole cake as it is known in Venezuela is not the typical French one, it is an original creation by Progonis. The cream is made with a unique recipe devised by him, which his family has maintained since his death at 83 years of age.
The proposals of traditional European confectionery sweets have also been well accepted by the Caracas public since the inauguration of this place. Dobus, Maskota, Greek Millefeuille, Greek Delight, Millefeuille, Strawberry Cake, Almond Delight, Triple. Nougatina, Tiramisu, Opera, among other delicacies.
The fine chocolates, which are made using French and Belgian techniques, white chocolate truffles with caramel, milk chocolate and chocolate ganache, are other delicacies.
Its other store, located in the Ciudad Tamanaco Shopping Center, opened in 1998, and is also still open like the one at Concresa.
The origin of this sweet dessert
The history of baking places France as the country where the profiterole originated. It was a recipe that evolved over the centuries.
Its beginnings date back to the XNUMXth century, in the kitchen of Queen Catherine de Medicis, where her chefs made a hot dough cake similar in flavor to profiteroles. But in the XNUMXth century, this cake, made with wheat flour, eggs, water, butter and salt, was renamed choux pastry.
A century later, in the XNUMXth century, the French chef Antonin Careme was credited with the idea of filling the profiteroles with pastry cream, a recipe that was perfected by the French pastry chef Jean Avice.
