Top (Pastry) Chef Ann Amernick
On an afternoon in early July, Ann Amernick and I descend into the pastry kitchen in the basement of her Owings Mills home and take up position behind a stainless steel worktable coated with confectioners’ sugar and covered with round chocolate molds. Our mission is to make candy hydrangea to decorate the wedding cake for Amernick’s son, who is to be married within the week.
To begin, Amernick cuts a slice from a block of chilled pastillage, a concoction of gelatin, water and sugar that has the texture of Play-Doh and the taste of unflavored Necco wafers and crusts into a brittle sheet faster than you can say “former White House pastry chef.”
A five-time nominee for the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef, Amernick has worked for Presidents Carter and Reagan at the White House and for Jean-Louis Palladin at his famed restaurant Jean-Louis at the Watergate Hotel, in addition to owning several bakeries in the D.C. area. And yet she traces her desire to be a pastry chef back to humble trips to the Quixie at Hutzler’s downtown store while she was growing up in Baltimore. “They had a dessert cart and I just fantasized about this chocolate icebox pudding,” she says. “I don’t even know if it was that good, but it was dark and gummy and had pieces of cake inside of it É I’ve never been able to replicate it.”
Despite being entranced by food, Amernick pursued an education degree and taught school until she stopped work to start a family. In a happy turn of events reminiscent of Julia Child’s, in 1970 Amernick went to Paris for the first time, fell madly in love with fine desserts and began to teach herself to create them. After that, she set about breaking into the restaurant business. “They were really not hiring women then,” she says. “It took me about 10 months and I finally got a job at The Big Cheese in Georgetown, a restaurant owned by a woman.
“I would say I learned on the job,” says Amernick, who advanced from salad girl to pastry specialist by 1977 and went on to work as the head pastry chef at several acclaimed restaurants, earning rave reviews and honors at each. Then, in 1980, Amernick met Henry Haller, the then-new pastry chef at the White House. She asked him if he needed any help, and the next thing she knew, she was the White House assistant pastry chef, working with some of the most renowned chefs in the world, tailoring menus to the specific orders of the presidents.
“It was a thrill and an honor to work there,” Amernick recalls. “I never walked in the door that I didn’t feel moved by it.” One of her favorite memories is of koshering the White House kitchen when the Camp David Accords were signed there in 1978.
Amernick returned to Baltimore several years ago to marry her second husband and to be closer to her mother, brothers and sister. These days she is “retired,” which means she’s scaled back to teaching private baking classes and writing cookbooks. “What I’d love to do is consult for a nearby restaurant,” she says offhandedly. “That would be a great way to get involved in Baltimore and still be retired.”
Amernick has published three books, the most recent of which is “The Art of Dessert,” a combination of recipes, tips and techniques interspersed with savory anecdotes from her career. Though the recipes are not for the fainthearted, the pictures alone are enough to make any shake-and-baker want to try her hand at the finer culinary arts— and was dubbed a “must have” for any serious baker by nationally acclaimed pastry chef Gale Gand.
After she finishes the final candy hydrangea, Amernick slides the mold onto an industrial-sized drying rack and wipes down her work area. Then she reaches into the refrigerator and slices a wedge of decadent-looking chocolate cake, hands me a fork and says, with a wry smile, “See if you can taste the difference between this and the stuff you get at Giant.”
Call 410-654-0434 for information about baking classes. Annamernick.com
