Géraldine Dormoy, web editor-in-chief of L’Express Styles and author of the Café Mode blog, mother of 5-and-a-half-year-old Gustave.
Your Proustian madeleine?
My mother’s apple tart. For years I’ve been trying to recreate the fluffiness of her pastry, without success.
Your favorite family (besides yours and ours)?
My friends. They are all strong personalities whose way of going about life I admire. No matter how busy they are, they are there when I need them.
Where do you go for lunch with the family?
My parents don’t live very far away, so we are often crammed into their place, but more often for dinner. For lunch as a trio, we like La Gioconda in Batignolles, an unpretentious and very welcoming Italian restaurant.
What does an afternoon snack with the family look like at your house?
I love making cookies. My readers still talk to me about the recipe I updated on the blog.
A real treat of an activity with the kids?
Painting. He puts on his apron and I open his little pots of paint. I get half an hour of peace, and at the end, there’s a new magnificent picture to hang on the fridge!
A recipe that can be made in two shakes of a lamb’s tail?
Gustave is becoming an omelet king. He cracks and beats his eggs himself, pours them into his mini frying pan, and watches them cook. Phew, he still needs me to flip it like a pancake, but that’s all!
How does he roll you in the flour?
When he tries to prove to me that he is right using a whole bunch of fallacious arguments. I love following his little-kid reasoning.
He makes a big deal out of it when…?
When his dad isn’t there in the evening.
A favorite product from “À la Mère de Famille”?
The Advent calendar, so beautiful that I can’t bear to part with it, even when every day has been opened.
A gift for “À La Mère de Famille” for its 255th birthday?
A tea room?
As Annie Cordy said, “Cho KaKao, if I give you chocolate, what do you give me?”
Coconuts.
