# Searching for French Pastry Term



## jellly (Jan 3, 2005)

Phoenetically it sounds like shuh-blahn. It means to thinly coat the bottom of a cake with chocolate, so the cake doesn't stick to the plate. 

I have googled various spellings and can't find it. Does anyone know the term?


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## chefpeon (Jun 14, 2006)

I have a friend who is a food writer and she's fluent in French as well. I asked her your question and she is flummoxed. She even searched through a 5 page vocabulary of pastry terminology and she can't find anything that sounds like it. She wants to know where you'd heard it. A video perhaps? Or did you just hear it in passing? She thinks if she can hear the word it might help.

Also, the only word that *I* can think of off the top of my head that sounds like your word is "sabayon".


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## jellly (Jan 3, 2005)

Thank you so much, Chefpeon, for trying to find an answer for me.
I used to work for a French pastry chef who had previously worked for Ducasse and Payard. He was the one that used the term. I want to write it as chablon, but can't remember seeing it written previously. . 
I reached out to another chef that worked there and though she didn't know the spelling either, she added a "D" and called it shablonde.

I recently put a cake on my menu that was occasionally sticking to the cutting board when I was portioning it. I thought of this technique and it has been very helpful. I sometimes put this as a task on my production list and hate the notion of spelling it wrong.


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## chefpeon (Jun 14, 2006)

OK, with your new info, my friend found what you're looking for. Here's what she wrote me:" Anyway, now I found it. Weird that it's not in that patissier dictionary, maybe it's not in common use. The verb infinitive is chablonner (pronounced sha-blon-eh). It means according to the French Wikipedia definition to coat a cake with chocolate in order to reinforce it. It doesn't say anything about keeping it from sticking to a plate. So I guess you could call the coating itself chablon, I'm not sure about that but it would follow the rules of French generally speaking."


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## jellly (Jan 3, 2005)

You mean I accidentally spelled it right? Fantastic!

Thank you so much and have a wonderful new year!


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## Pat Pat (Sep 26, 2017)

Sometime ago, I knew and used the word chablon to mean a stencil. Like in this video.


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