Here we go!…..

Welcome to the blog portion of our show. Here’s the where I will include tips, tricks, and recipes. But first, a little bit about myself and where I fit in the world of delicious.

It was a long and windy road getting to pastry chef land. I won’t get into that much detail, because we’d be here all day. I enrolled in culinary school later in life, after a stint in filmmaking and chasing acting. I loved my time in school and worked freakin hard. After graduating I interned at the world famous Spago in Beverly Hills then quickly hired on full-time. I learned SO MUCH!! It wasn’t easy, so far from a walk in the park - sometimes it was a dead sprint in a busy city being chased by extras from Escape From New York. The first time I worked the lunch line by myself was Mother’s Day weekend…. And I cried. Trial by fire sticks with you, that’s for sure.

Then enter March of 2020. The restaurant industry suffered and is still suffering. I lost my job at Spago, as well as many many other people. What do you do? I began baking like crazy. I started Cher’s Sugar Shack and did what I could. I just really didn’t want the skills I had spent good money on learning to go to waste. And then…. Hollywood came calling.

More like a good friend. She was looking for someone who had production experience and a culinary dessert background. WHA?… Might as well start the job search “Dear Cher,” The job was an Associate Culinary Producer for a new Food Network show called “CandyLand” based on the board game. The job was completely unique and might not ever come around again. My main job was to work with the art department and create edible pieces of the set — so it would appear that the entire set was edible. Over-sized gumdrops, gingerbread, massive peppermint bark… anything the producers wanted, I had to figure out how to make, and how it would fit into each land. It was so much fun!!

Now that the show has wrapped, I needed to figure out what was next! I got some pretty good feedback from my bakes and the stuff I did on CandyLand, so I thought I’d share my recipes with whomever wanted them! I hope you all join in and help make the world a little more delicious. Let’s all have some fun!

To read my recipes you’ll need to know a couple of things: There will be imperial measurements, metric measurement, I’m all over the map and want to keep you on your toes! The fact of the matter is, I found and adjusted recipes from all over and it never occured to me to change the measurement system - I just adjusted myself. Here is a key to my shortcuts:

C = Cups / Tbl = Tablespoon / tsp = teaspoon // oz = ounces / g = grams

Assume all the temperature is fahrenheit, unless indicated otherwise.

You can read the Diced article covering my CandyLand work here