Meet Audrey Silvestre | Pastry Chef

We had the good fortune of connecting with Audrey Silvestre and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Audrey, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Growing up, I’d spend time in the kitchen with my parents learning how to bake and always enjoyed the decorating part the most. It then became a small dream of mine to one day open up my own bake shop/cafe. It was never really my main goal and something I just considered to do once I was retired. But come the pandemic, boredom peaked and I spent a good amount of that time in the kitchen experimenting for myself. After trial and error, and couple critiques from family and friends, I created a unique recipe that everyone loved. Slowly but surely, I received a lot of encouragement to start selling my pastries and since then I’ve had countless amount of love and support to help build my business.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The birth of SilvesTreats started from wanting to just experiment and have fun in the kitchen, to creating a recipe for my quite popular, Ube Crème Brûlée. From there, grew the idea of wanting to incorporate asian flavors into your everyday desserts. I want to be able to create unique recipes that aren’t as common for people to find around Dallas and are also representation of who I am. I draw inspiration from flavors all over asia, and try to fuse them into delicious recipes from all over the world. Creating new recipes is all a matter of time and patience to perfect. I am my biggest critique, but I’ve gone through a lot of trial and error to get my recipes to be the tastiest for everyone to enjoy. The look and reaction of everyone’s first bite of my creations fuels my love and passion for baking. “If you love what you do, then you never really work a day in your life.” I didn’t have a lot going for myself when I started this business, I was unemployed and spending the last of what I had to building SilvesTreats. But now, I’ve come as far as to be able cater or table for weddings, birthdays. and other events, host pop-ups, create new recipes to share and work as a pastry chef in Dallas. SilvesTreats has come a long way, but we can only go up from here.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
There is plenty to eat and drink in Dallas. One of my favorite places to get a good taste of everything is visiting the Dallas Farmers Market on the weekends and being able to support local businesses. But I am a foodie by heart, so if I’m not at the DFM, I’m exploring new places to eat. A couple of my top favorite spots are Latin Deli and Keller’s Hamburgers. But you can also always find me anywhere in Carrollton for the best asian food. I love to explore and find cute coffee shops around DFW to get some work done and get my daily dose of caffeine. My go-to’s are Inclusion Coffee, Wayward Coffee Co., Houndstooth Coffee and White Rhino Coffee. For a more evening type of drink, I love a good laid back and environment where I can just sit and chat with friends, so the Truck Yard and the ArtPark in Trinity Groves are great places to grab a drink. Trinity Groves is also a great place to view the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge and the Dallas skyline from the Ronald Kirk Bridge during the day or night. Want a little bit more fun? Singbox and KTV in Carrollton are the perfect place to grab a drink and grab a mic for a fun karaoke night with your friends. But when the weather is just right, I like to take time for myself and hike at the Cedar Ridge Preserve. But it’s not a Texas visit if you don’t take your friends from out of town to see the Stockyards in Fort Worth.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
If I could, I would love to list everyone who has supported me through the process of starting my own business. I genuinely appreciate them for all the love and support I’ve received over these past few months. One particular friend I do want to recognize is my friend, Michika. She is a coffee connoisseur, and my favorite home barista. Her and I share a common dream of one day opening up our own cafe. Through the starting process, she actually helped me create a business plan and how to approach it all, because I was completely clueless about everything. She kept encouraging and reassuring me when ever I started to feel disheartened and doubtful about myself as a business owner. Overtime, she because my go-to taste tester and was honestly the biggest fan of everything I made, even if it wasn’t my best work. We were also inspired by a TikTok to open up our own little cafe from home for our friends to enjoy our creations. With great success, we continued to work together and host more pop-up events together for everyone to enjoy. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my family, who have inspired me; my friends, who have cheered me on; and my customers, who are the reason I enjoy baking.

Website: silvestreats.com (under construction)

Instagram: @silvestreats

Facebook: SilvesTreats

Image Credits
Victoria Nguyen Hubert Huy Patrick Le