Pastry Chef

Builders work with wood, metal and concrete. Seamstresses work with needles, fabric and thread. Printers work with paper and ink. If you’re a Pastry Chef, however, your tools are the envy of just about everyone you meet: As a Pastry Chef, you work with chocolate, sugar, frosting, fruit and dough.

A Chef who specializes in desserts, your job as a Pastry Chef is making sweets and baked goods for restaurants, bakeries, hotels, cafeterias and catering companies. Your main duties, therefore, are measuring, weighing, sifting, whipping and sometimes kneading ingredients in order to make breads, pies, cakes, cookies and other confections, such as candy, doughnuts, tarts, petit fours, brownies, mousses and more.

Supervised by an Executive Chef, you’re tasked with making things that not only taste good, but also look beautiful. Decoration and presentation are therefore important — and also fun, since desserts often are more whimsical than other meal parts, such as appetizers or entrees.

“Whimsical” doesn’t mean “trivial,” however. Make no mistake: You’re a serious Chef. Like those who specialize in savory cooking, your sweet preparations utilize serious ingredients — such as fresh seasonal produce, organic eggs and fine imported chocolates — and serious culinary techniques, which require knowledge not only about cooking, but also about science, since baking is all about chemical reactions, proportions and temperatures.

As head of the dessert station in a kitchen — or as the head of your own retail bakery — you’re also in charge of planning menus, ordering ingredients and testing recipes.

Although you’re prone to cavities and sugar rushes, all in all, you’ll find, your job’s super sweet.