I do not remember at what age I brought my first

chocolate cake into the world, although I will never

forget the excitement and pride I felt on presenting

it. I must have been seven or eight--old enough to

read and follow directions by myself on the cake mix box. Over the

years, my techniques and palate have become more sophisticated,

but my love of chocolate has never left me.

Bold and experimental, by age seventeen I was not content with

making plain gingerbread houses. Having seen the Frank Lloyd

Wright houses near my home in the Chicago suburbs, I was deter-

mined to make a cantilevered cake. Enlisting the services of an engi-

neering student, I was able to work the design out on paper; Of

course, the cake flopped (literally) and achieved infamy as the Frank

Lloyd Wrong cake. I had intended to decorate it in the austere man-

ner of Mondrian. Instead, I improvised the Jackson Pollock style to

the dismay of my poor mother, who found splashes of brightly col-

ored buttercream in strange places for weeks thereafter.

I was twenty when I got my first job as a pastry chef in a restaurant

in Madison, Wisconsin, where I was studying the history of art at the

university. I knew nothing of professional pastry-making techniques

at the time but my enthusiasm made up for my lack of technical

expertise. Then another restaurant in Madison hired me to be not

only pastry chef but the one and only cook at lunch and dinner. I

managed to fake my way through the main courses only by virtue of