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“Dessert cooking demos got me out of class,” laughs Pastry Chef Donald Smith recalling the culinary inspirations of an 8-year old in Swainsesboro, Georgia. “I also watched Mom bake classic cakes, German chocolate cake, Italian cream cake.” Donald jokes about the ill-fated day his mother showed him how to bake her Southern fave, Red Velvet cake. “With its bright colors and sweet flavors, the Red Velvet was the curse of this kid.” But it wasn’t just baking that nudged Donald toward the patisserie. Along with sweets, he loved science and he saw cooking as “the transformation of flour, eggs, sugar, Georgia pecans and blackberries into something else.” |
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Donald’s inspirations didn’t stop at alchemy and home cooking. A quick glance is all it takes to see the inexorable influence of art -- in all its forms -- on his desserts. His Chocolate Ganache Cake plate looks like a contemporary urban architectural plaza crowned by twin chocolate skyscrapers. His sumptuous Carrot Torte is a striated cake-and-ginger-cream-cheese building set in a wacky, orchestral Tim Burtonesque garden. “I apply the thinking of other artists to food. I design food around flavors, colors and mood just like a song is designed around tempo.” Donald is a freethinker. “No clichés,” he says. No repros of old dessert standards. Instead Donald “re-imagines” classic textures and flavor profiles to create original desserts that “build on a memory of a standard dessert.” His tangy, velveteen citrus mousse (continued) |
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