Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apartments
Classifieds
Shopping
Being a pastry chef isn’t all brown-sugar shortbread cookies and rhubarb cream.
It involves plenty of planning and artful presentation, because you can’t make a decadent dessert just taste good – you have to make it pretty, too.
And it needs to be flavored with a variety of tastes and textures, so every bite complements the others – such as a dish of hazelnut milk-chocolate mousse that’s served with flambéed bananas, chocolate streusel and hazelnut toffee.
At Joseph Decuis in Roanoke, that’s the job of pastry chef Hetty Arts, who started in September.
Besides the chocolate mousse, her current dessert menu features chocolate bête noire (flourless cake) with raspberry gelato and pistachio nougatine; chicory coffee crème brûlée with bittersweet chocolate ganache, blood-orange reduction and a chocolate croquette; and passionfruit semifreddo (half-frozen mousse) with a strawberry-white wine reduction and the shortbread.
“I like the idea of making a dessert look like a piece of art … it almost looks too good to actually eat,” says Arts, 22.
But a lot of work goes into creating that impression.
She plans the seasonal menus, prepares all of the ingredients from scratch every few days and carefully plates each dessert for guests who order a final course.
Recently, she also started a trend of making mignardises, or small after-dinner candies, such as black currant and raspberry jellies, for all guests.
“We’ve never had a chef dedicated only to making desserts. It’s quite a luxury for us and our guests… Hetty’s desserts help take us to a higher level,” executive chef Aaron Butts says.
Like any other course, an eatery’s desserts reflect seasonal ingredients and customer preferences.
Arts incorporates rhubarb that grows behind the restaurant into her strawberry-rhubarb soup, which accompanies the strawberry-coconut cheesecake, rhubarb cream and strawberry leather (a glamorous fruit roll-up).
One idea that didn’t make the menu: A mango-papaya soup, which another chef said might be too exotic for some palates.
Regardless of ingredients, pastry preparation requires just as much effort and patience, if not more, than savory cooking, Arts says.
“It’s a different kind of busy. It takes a lot of finesse and a lot of precision. You have to take time, to put in your effort. You can’t just quickly do it; it won’t turn out the same,” she says.
Her process starts earlier and often takes longer than other chefs’. A dessert’s components might require baking or cooking and then cooling, or mixing and then chilling or freezing. And it all has to be beautifully assembled before it’s carried to a table.
Arts joined the restaurant last fall, a few months after she graduated from the Midwest Culinary Institute in Cincinnati.
She was born in Holland; her family moved to Ohio when she was 13.
“The pastries that we always had in Holland shape what I do now,” Arts says.
There, desserts are “much more refined, even in less prestigious restaurants,” she says, and bakeries are more prevalent because bread is so popular.
And while some head chefs might turn up their noses at the sweet stuff and consider dessert merely a trifle, that’s not the case with her boss.
“Aaron could not have given me more creative freedom. There are never any limits,” she says.
So when she was pondering flavors for a new sorbet, she came up with nectarine and cardamom.
“I just thought of those flavors together. I’ve never seen it anywhere,” she says.
The dish is served with a nectarine and pecan tartlet, caramel cream and caramel-pecan powder.
“For me, appeal is a huge part. It should look as good as it’s going to taste,” Arts says.
Hartley’s: The dessert menu changes weekly (and recently featured sour-cherry bread pudding and chocolate-tarragon cake), but the homemade crème brûlée is available year-round. Seasonal flavors include orange-cinnamon in the fall and white-chocolate peppermint at Christmas. The current version is vanilla, served with fresh berries.
“It’s just a really nice dessert; it’s a French classic. It’s not too heavy,” owner Pamela Downs says.
Hartley’s is at 4301 Fairfield Ave. For reservations, call 744-3141.
Sandra D’s Garden Café: Owner-chef Bentley Dillinger created the popular Rain Drop pastry, which is always on the menu. Filling flavors change weekly and have included blackberry, cherry, raspberry and almond, strawberry-rhubarb, and peaches and cream. A pecan pie version is in the works, and a Key Lime Rain Drop is still being perfected. The restaurant’s tiramisu and cannoli also are house-made.
Sandra D’s is at 1330 S. Main St., Auburn. For reservations, call 260-927-7282.
Cerulean: Sink your spoon into luscious gelato, the Italian version of ice cream, or sorbet (which is dairy-free). Flavors change weekly and have included almond, avocado, blueberry, chocolate-mint and green tea. The 30-hour process starts heavy cream, eggs and milk being heated on the stove.
Cerulean (www.ceruleanrestaurant.com) is at 1101 E. Canal St., Winona Lake. For reservations, call 574-269-1226.
