Collection

My mother was a lifetime subscriber to Bon Appetit Magazine and through the decades, the recipes in the magazine mirrored the same trends that chefs followed. When the tiramisu craze was in every restaurant in the mid 1990s, every edition had a version of Tiramisu (in fact, when the magazine relaunched in 2010, they published……...

In 2008, I interviewed in Washington, D.C. with José Andrés to be his corporate pastry chef. He was expanding his small group of restaurants to Los Angeles and he was collecting chefs to secure the front lines of his culinary team. “Kriss, I am a dreamer and when I dream, I dream big. We are……...

In the late 1970s, my new sister in law, six months pregnant and with a son from a previous relationship, moved into my family home. The house went from a family of 7 to a family of 10. It made for a crowded and chaotic home life. But she brought her Thai culture into our……...

Making chocolate mousse may seem like a boring topic to discuss but I can’t express how important it is to arm your skillset with a base of solid fundamentals. Those fundamentals being a combination of solid recipes and using great techniques and methods. And that is all pastry is; it is learning basic techniques and……...

As a kid, I loved marshmallows. We never went camping as a family and to this day, I have never tasted a s’more. I joked with my sister once that we never camped because we were too poor to camp. “Too poor for s’mores!” became our rallying cry. But I did love taking a sack……...

Whenever I see videos on social media of a chef putting a shiny mirror glaze on a mousse cake, I am amazed by how many views and likes the post receives. I always think, “Man, people are attracted to that shiny glaze just as easily as fish are attracted to a shiny lure.” I am……...

I teach classes all over the world and I get to speak to all levels of chefs. Other than coming to me to help their career development and to enhance their skill set, a lot of chefs that I meet want to know how to make more money with their business. Most have small businesses……...

I have always loved chocolate. It is the only food group enjoyed by every culture on earth. You may meet a person or two in your lifetime that may not like it but you’re much more likely to meet someone who hates pickles, can’t eat cilantro (that would be me) or has issues with the……...

In 2008, when the market tanked and the housing market crashed, restaurants went down with them. It was an awful time to be a chef and was especially awful if you were a pastry chef. Hotels and restaurants routinely shut down the pastry department when recessions hit. Pastry chefs are a luxury and chefs and……...

This is a lesson in mathematics. Specifically, geometry. And before we get to the next chapters, you have to learn it. And once this geometry lesson is mastered, you will be able to make many things from this book and then you’ll be able to create your own items. I wish when I was struggling……...