Icing on the cake

CLAIRE PTAK had planned to move to London with her English boyfriend Damian when she was offered a job as pastry chef at the famous Chez Panisse in Berkeley in California.

This is any chef’s dream job — working with beautiful seasonal ingredients and a passionate team of foodies to bounce ideas off. So she took the job and began a long-distance relationship.

The desserts at Chez Panisse are not wild and fancy concoctions incorporating a trillion elements. They are simple fruit tarts, cake, fruit salads, fools and mousses that reflect the seasons and the produce of the local farmers and farmers’ markets. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse has been known to serve just one perfect peach in pristine condition from Frog Hollow Farm for pudding.