LEAVING IN STYLE

It’s a photo op moment. And the graduation guests are eating it up, in a manner of speaking. With cameras and cell phones in position, they stand before a 30’ display of eye-catching baked goods: cookies and cakes in familiar and unexpected shapes and all the colors of the rainbow. Small children gawk in amazement at the edible FoodBank truck and the edible fat pumpkin; also at a tree made of cream puffs and cupcakes topped by “spaghetti and meatballs.” “Look at the star cookies,” a little boy in a salmon-colored shirt says, pointing to squiggly, color-mad creations reminiscent of Jackson Pollack’s drip paintings. His younger brother, in a matching shirt, stares dreamily a platter of chocolate petit fours. After the ceremony, that treat will be his.

The desserts on display are the final projects of students in Chef Portia Lashley’s Baking Program. All products are made from scratch, the old fashioned way. Chef Portia stresses creativity. Drawing on her home library, she inspires students with the work of pastry wizards, famous and little known. “Just about anything is possible with sugar,” she tells the class. “If you can imagine it, you can find a way to create it out of different sugar mediums.” A successful project, she explains, will push students out of their comfort zone. That’s when learning occurs.

Bakers in the graduating class of October 2009 got the message. Indeed, the baking group let imagination, taste, and competitiveness drive their projects. Consider Karen Morris’ undertaking. Before she lost her job as a supervisor in a corporate cleaning business, luxury-loving Karen drove a Mercedes. She bought her son a Mercedes, too. Karen had noticed a Louis Vuitton bag, a satchel, in Chef Portia’s portfolio of party cakes. Instantly, she knew that was the dessert she wanted to make. On several occasions she stayed after class, well into the night, questioning Chef Portia and laboring over the complicated shape and surface design. Karen had actually promised her son a Vuitton bag for his birthday. Her cake at graduation was a message to him: the present is coming. 

Karen wasn’t the only student with luggage on her mind. Regine Raymond and her partner Evett Pieters were also smitten with Vuitton’s high-end signature look and message of quality. Regine, a Wall Street broker laid off in the financial meltdown of 2008, craves extra tough challenges. Eager to exceed all expectations, she and Evett planned to bake not just one bag but a three-piece set, including a make-up case, satchel and carry-on. They were already working on four other baked items for the graduation feast. The most ambitious was a cake shaped like a huge quilted pillow covered with presents - - an extravaganza of more than a dozen (layer cake) boxes decorated with ribbons and bows. What’s a graduation without gifts, gifts made of flour, sugar, eggs, fruit and fondant?

With Karen staking a prior claim to Vuitton, Regine and Evett contemplated other designer possibilities. At school on the Saturday before graduation, Regine checked out Channel’s luggage line on their website. Channel’s products, like Vuitton’s, embody elegance, craftsmanship, and global chic. The classy website sent her into overdrive. Although time was running out, she was sure they could still produce Channel’s trademark quilted surfaces and logo on three differently shaped cases. Thanks to Evett’s steady hands and unwavering discipline, they managed.  Just barely. The last adjustment of a handle on the carry-on bag was completed only fifteen minute before 38 graduates marched into “the auditorium” to applause and cheers.

Some think of graduation as the end of an arduous journey. Not so. Graduation, as Chef Portia and her colleagues make clear, is only a passage: a train station on the way to a better defined but still unknown future. Regine, Karen, Evett and many of their baking classmates went flat out. They put in extra hours, worked feverishly, mastered elusive techniques, and suffered with their mistakes. They took risks and relished their own creativity. On graduation day, evidence of their commitment was on the dessert table, a garden of baked beauties, for all to admire.

Among the standout items on display were Regine and Evett’s three quilted Channel bags in white and Karen’s brown and beige Vuitton satchel: high-end luggage for travels to come. While these pieces are the pride of their creators, they also express the spirit of a cohort - - glorious goods for a gala goodbye! The bakers are leaving in style.

Doris Friedensohn
9 October 2009

(Doris Friedensohn is Professor Emerita at New Jersey City University. She writes about eating, education, feminism, and social change. A chapter in her food memoir, Eating as I Go: Scenes from America and Abroad, published in 2006 by the University Press of Kentucky, deals with the Food Service Training Academy.)