One of the many hats I wear as creative director is that of a guest lecturer. Perhaps my favorite task at ICE is leading our professional Pastry & Baking students' introduction to dairy products during the very first days of their program.

At ICE, we're always thrilled to celebrate the successes of our graduates, and, in particular, to invite them "back to school" to share their stories and expertise with our current students. Most recently, we invited two outstanding alumni—Miguel Trinidad and Kamal Rose—to demonstrate some of their signature dishes and impart industry advice from their years of experience after ICE.

ICE Chef Instructor Toba Garrett wasn’t always a master cake decorator, renowned for her unusually attractive, skilled, and delicious confections. Her prior careers spanned the fields of theatre, education, and computer science, before she changed her life through culinary education.

As a professional pastry chef, I have a deep relationship with candy. But then don’t we all? Several years ago, I began to ponder the ‘culture’ that surrounds our taste for sweets. What I came to realize is that we relate to sweetness on three different levels: the physiological, the psychological, and the nostalgic.

It’s always a privilege when we can invite our alumni back to ICE to share their professional expertise with our students, including those in recreational cooking classes. Recently we welcomed back Ivy Stark, a 1995 graduate of ICE’s Culinary Arts program, and currently the Corporate Executive Chef of Dos Caminos, a critically-acclaimed restaurant with several locations in New York City as well as New Jersey and Florida.

It was recently announced that Chef Wylie Dufresne, one of the leaders of the country's modernist cooking movement, would be closing down the acclaimed, 11-year-old wd~50 on New York City's Lower East Side. Dufresne has gained national recognition for his cutting-edge creativity, receiving awards including the 2013 James Beard Award for "Best Chef New York City" and a Michelin star, which he has maintained every year at wd~50 since the founding of the Michelin's first American edition, in 2006.

As I finalize the contract details for my next cookbook(!), I thought this would be the perfect time to write about my efforts in securing a book deal, as well as the the process I like to use to write the books themselves. Rizzoli published my first cookbook, Desserts for Every Season, in September of 2013, to critical acclaim. However, it was only with the help of an incredible agent, editor, photographer, and cookbook design team that I was actually able to get the thing written.

Whether you’re a professional cook or just an eager eater, we all have an intense, multi-layered relationship with flavor. There are tastes that remind us of childhood, foods that terrify or intrigue us with their strangeness, and flavors we crave time and time again. But how as chefs do we harness flavor? Where does it come from?

In New York City, we may look first to the New York Times or other local publications for restaurant ratings, but on the international stage, there is no more respected standard of excellence than the Michelin star.

"There are no new ideas," the old saying goes. Yet every day a chef will challenge himself to disprove that statement, reimagining the experience of eating and bringing new life to the tried-and-true.