Chicago’s venerable pastry artiste Gale Gand will discuss the vintage cookbooks, pamphlets and ephemera she owns that influence her work as a pastry chef, as well as some culinary history such as the story of the invention of the Pavlova. She will touch on her theory that women’s creativity went into their cooking, since they weren’t in the work force, as well as her own background.

Gale Gand, executive pastry chef and partner of the Five Diamond, four-star restaurant TRU in Chicago, was named pastry chef of the year by The James Beard Foundation and Bon Appétit magazine in 2001. Host of the Food Network’s Sweet Dreams, Gale has appeared on Iron Chef America, Martha Stewart, Baking With Julia (Child), and judged Bravo’s “Top Chef.” Gale is also an accomplished cookbook author with seven titles to her credit including Chocolate and Vanilla and her most recent, Gale Gand’s Brunch. She also has her own root beer company producing “Gale’s Root beer”. She earned a BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology, and attended culinary school at La Varenne in Paris. Gale is married to an environmentalist, has a 13-year-old named Gio and twin 5-year-old girls, Ella and Ruby.

Recorded Saturday, June 05, 2010 at Kendall College.