Based in Los Angeles, California, Chef Mario Bacherini is the West Coast Pastry Chef of L’École Valrhona, where is he is in charge of conducting classes, demonstrations and workshops for professionals, providing one-on-one culinary consultations and bringing Valrhona’s expert touch to the West Coast. After graduating from culinary school in Florence, Italy, Chef Bacherini went on to do his apprenticeship as a chocolatier. He began working in Michelin-starred restaurants across Italy and...

Born and raised in the south of France, Didier Saba started his career as an accountant, but his love for creating French pastries eventually led to training at the famous pastry school Lenôtre. With the help of a renowned pastry chef from Lenôtre, he relocated to the United States and opened his first Le Macaron French Pastries Cafe in 2009. Didier and his family founded Le Macaron with the mission of bringing authentic macarons to the States. Educating and delighting customers about how...

Chef Gonzo Jimenez was born in Northern Argentina and raised in a Spanish household surrounded by good food and long family meals. At the age of 17, he started working in restaurants and fell in love with the culinary world. He enrolled in pastry and culinary school in Buenos Aires. After completing his studies, he traveled around the country working for five-star hotels and celebrity chefs. From 2009 to 2013, Chef Gonzo worked for large hotels in the United States, including the St. Julien...

Philip Khoury is the award-winning Head Pastry Chef at Harrods in London and the author of the newly released book A New Way to Bake: Re-imagined Recipes for Plant-Based Cakes, Bakes and Desserts (Hardie Grant, 2023). Chef Khoury started his career at Australia’s most awarded restaurant, Quay in Sidney, before becoming Adriano Zumbo’s head of R&D, launching hundreds of patisserie lines in his native Australia. After a number of years spent realizing the food industry’s unsustainable...

Affectionately known by her fans as the ‘Queen Of Cakes’, Yolanda Gampp is a self-taught cake artist with more than 24 years of experience and half a billion views on YouTube. With her quirky personality, obsession with organization and commitment to perfection, Gampp has shown the world that even the most unexpected items can be turned into cake. She entertains while she teaches, laughs at her own mistakes and is one of the most respected and celebrated celebrity cake artists in the world....

After over 20 years of making sweets in celebrated kitchens all over the world, Chef Adam Thomas launched his own brand, Thomas Craft Confections, in Brenham, TX. Adam began his professional journey working at a San Diego bakery at age 18 with Alsatian master baker Pascal Zindel, and it was there that he realized that confectionary arts was his calling. During a successful apprenticeship at the prestigious Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel, Adam connected with long-time mentor, Jean-Francois “Jeff”...

You may recognize Rebecca from her appearance on Top Chef: Just Desserts or the standout mention in Southern Living where her Houston-based, sweet tooth haven of a storefront, Fluff Bake Bar, was named one of the “South’s Best Bakeries.” The Wyoming native made her first “go big or go home” play back in 1999 when she secured a spot at the famed Le Cordon Bleu school in Paris, and soon after, a coveted internship at the landmark Le Bristol hotel.  There, under the tutelage of Pastry Chef...

Jana Lai is a pint-sized pastry chef with an insatiable appetite for success. With her determination and fierce competitive spirit, Jana has fought through the competition scene, recently taking home second place at the World Pastry Cup as the first female ever to join the French team. Hailing from Australia, Jana began her culinary journey under the guidance of notable chefs Maria Lantelme, Shaun Quade, and Pierre Roelofs. But the call (and smell) of the pastry capital of the world proved...

Elaine Boddy is a sourdough baker, cookbook writer and teacher, but mostly a sourdough ‘simplifier’. The key focus of everything she does, and shares, is to show how truly simply sourdough can be made. She removes the complication and unnecessary steps, and often the fear, that can come with making sourdough. Elaine shows bakers all over the world how they can easily make their own healthy, tasty bread, week in, week out, in their home kitchens, to suit their lifestyle and timings. She has a...

In 2006, while pregnant with her first son, Chef Nicole Patel made a batch of chocolate truffles as last-minute holiday gifts. To the delight of her friends and family, truffle-making became an enjoyable pastime for Nicole that relieved the stress of her corporate engineering job. In 2008, a serendipitous trip to the Texas Wine Country led to Nicole being the first person in Texas to make truffles using local wines. Thanks to her dedication and self-taught skills, Delysia Chocolatier quickly...

A certified pastry star, Kelly Nam is the Executive Pastry Chef and Partner at Joomak Banjum restaurant in New York City. She began her career as a pastry cook at Radius in Boston, and then went on to hone her skills at prestigious restaurants including L’Espalier in Boston and Nobu 57, Gordon Ramsay at The London Hotel, The Modern and Electric Lemon in New York City. She also served as Executive Pastry Chef at Frenchie in Paris. Last year she was named 2022 Pastry Chef of the Year by the...

Cedric Barbaret, owner, operator and chef of Bistro Barbaret & Bakery in Lancaster, PA, has over 25 years of professional pastry experience as well as a Master’s Degree in Pastry from Patisserie Chereau in France. His passion for pastry began at Patissrerie Barbaret, his family’s bakery near Lyon, France, where he served his apprenticeship. Chef Barberet’s experience includes a position as Executive Pastry Chef at Donald Trump’s prestigious Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. While...

Karen Krasne is the owner and Executive Pastry Chef of Extraordinary Desserts and the author of Extraordinary Cakes: Recipes for Bold and Sophisticated Desserts, which is in its third printing. Once called the “Queen of Cakes” by Gourmet magazine, Karen brings a fresh and contemporary sensibility to special occasion cakes. What makes her cakes showstoppers are their unexpected flavor combinations and vibrant touches using fresh fruit and real flowers, which add flair without being fussy. ...

Brad Kintzer is the Chief Chocolate Maker at TCHO Chocolate, based in Berkeley, California. Prior to joining TCHO, Brad was chocolate maker and product developer at U.S. bean-to-bar chocolate pioneer, Scharffen Berger, acquired by The Hershey Company in 2005. Previous to his 20 years of chocolate making, Brad studied tropical botany and environmental studies at the University of Vermont, and spent months working on cacao plantations throughout Latin America to better understand the origins of...

Josh Allen is the Founder of Companion Baking. Born and raised in St. Louis, MO, Allen was immersed in the food and baking industry from an early age. His great-grandfather founded Allen Foods, a well-known broadline food distributor with a large customer base across the Midwest. Allen spent much of his childhood delivering groceries to various foodservice operations, cleaning the freezers and sweeping the trucks for his family’s business. Today, Companion’s award-winning bread is served in...

Pastry chef, entrepreneur and bon vivant, Cheryl Wakerhauser, sees every day as a chance to learn something new and contribute something else. After a short-lived career studying to be an astronaut, Cheryl received a degree in pastry arts from Vancouver’s Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts and then headed straight to Southern France to further train at the prestigious pâtisserie of MOF Philippe URRACA. Her eccentric dessert restaurant, Pix Pâtisserie, was born in Portland, Oregon in 2002,...

Maurizio Leo is the software engineer-turned-baker behind the award-winning sourdough website, The Perfect Loaf. He grew up in an Italian household and spent summers visiting family in Italy and the back kitchen of his family's Italian restaurant, learning the importance of making food by hand. He holds a master's degree in computer science and co-created the stargazing app, SkyView, before circling back to food and discovering the craft of baking sourdough bread. Since that first loaf of...

Cynthia Samanian is the founder of Culinary Creator Business School, an online business education company dedicated to the culinary industry. Her students learn how to create, sell and teach virtual cooking classes, corporate events and recorded courses that help them unlock more freedom and flexibility. Cynthia hosts the 5-star rated Culinary Creator Business School podcast. She's appeared as a guest on top industry podcasts and conferences including Eat Capture Share, Food Biz Wiz, the Food...

Genevieve Ko is a deputy editor and columnist of New York Times Cooking and the Food section, for which she also writes articles and develops recipes. She came to The Times from The Los Angeles Times, where she was cooking editor. She is the author of Better Baking (HMH, 2016) and has contributed to more than 20 cookbooks, as well as other food publications. Born and raised in East Los Angeles, she now lives in New York City and cooks dishes from everywhere. Check out Genevieve’s recipes for...

Lasheeda Perry is the pastry chef and owner of Queen of Flavor, a company that specializes in everything from revamping your dessert menu to helping you design and execute your dream dessert menu. Lasheeda has always had a passion for culinary arts, and luckily for the sweet-tooth everywhere, this love has materialized into a successful and rewarding career.  Prior to creating Queen of Flavor, she received her culinary education from Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI. ...

Romain Dufour knew from an early age that he wanted to be a baker. He was inspired by his uncle who owned his own bakery in a small town near Bourges, France and Romain worked as an apprentice there for two years. Romain attended the Ecole de Boulangerie et de Patisserie de Paris, earning two diplomas in four years. For his second diploma, Romain was hired at the renowned Plaza Athenée Hotel in Paris, under the direction of Christophe Michalak, World Champion of Pastry. In 2016, Romain...

Cydni N. Mitchell (aka Cyd) is a Bakery Consultant and the Sweet Business Coach behind Sweet Fest. Based in Atlanta, GA, Sweet Fest is an online company that supports the business needs of the Sweet Community in the areas of professional development, marketing, branding and web design. By trade, Cyd is an Accountant & Financial Analyst with a Masters from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the Head Instructor of the Sugar Coin...

Carol Gancia is the founder and head chocolatier of Kokak Chocolates, an artisanal chocolate company that specializes in small-batch single-origin heirloom chocolates in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco and ships within the continental U.S.  Hailing from San Francisco, Carol Gancia is an immigrant, LGBTQ member and rising female chocolatier. Kokak, which means “ribbit” in the Filipino language, is inspired by Gancia’s Asian heritage. She spearheads the creative process in designing...