dICEd Blog Listing

There is no (sugar-filled) challenge too great for Pastry & Baking Arts Chef-Instructor Norma Salazar. Case in point: Prior to joining ICE, the classically trained, foundationally French chef was...

Joshua McCain (Management, ‘18/Pastry, ‘21) didn’t always love to cook. At first, he simply made food to help his family. As the oldest of four children to a single mother, Joshua was often...

There are four keys to making proper puff pastry like a pastry chef. Keep it cold. The beautiful layers will only stay layers if you work with the dough cold and keep it cold throughout the process...

Long before I developed a passion for working with chocolate, I began fostering a love for coffee. I don’t exactly recall the occasion of my first pre-teen taste of coffee, but it subconsciously...

In mid-March, Arnold Byun, founder of With Warm Welcome (WWW), approached me with the idea of doing a Bakers Box after being inspired by the efforts of Bakers Against Racism last year. As an avid...

The first thing Chef Stephen Chavez remembers baking, with his mother’s help, was a pineapple upside-down cake that he discovered flipping through the pages of an issue of the children’s magazine,...

Jürgen initially aspired to act, sing and dance, but he followed in his sister's footsteps pursuing a career in the kitchen to have a solid job in case those passions didn't pay off. While making...

In many ways, coming to culinary school has been a decade-long dream in the making, with a lot of detours along the way. I didn’t grow up in a family that appreciated food or restaurants much, so it’s...

Pate a choux translates to "cabbage paste" and dates back to 1540 and the court of Catherine de’ Medici. Named for the way the small choux looks after baking, it is a relatively simple concoction with...

Every once in a while, a technique or a preparation will inspire me to reflect on some of the philosophical aspects of cooking. If I were to reduce the act of cooking down to the simplest of concepts...

Years ago, while working as the pastry chef at Le Bernardin, I began giving serious thought to the role of nostalgia and the sense of memories tied to taste. I still enjoy finding playful yet subtle...

I was grateful to have my former chef-instructor from ICE's Pastry & Baking Arts program, Penny Stankiewicz, share some wisdom about the process. “With recipe testing, the first thing I do is research...