I know for sure some people have dreamed of being a pastry chef from the time they were small. Maybe you were helping your mom make chocolate cake when you were just knee-high or you could have been experimenting with something as a teenager. Sometimes you see a famous pastry chef making spun sugar and chocolate cigars and think if only…
Often the answer is I’m too old so you move on, but it’s always possible to catch the dream no matter what stage of your life. Even if it is for few days. Sometimes we have a dream of what we think our life is going to be if we were to become a pastry chef, but in reality the industry is not about patience, thanks and smiles so your dream may have been crushed. This has happened to a lot of chefs.
What a lot of people have been blessed with is to go to a pastry chef school just for a summer. Some are lucky enough to venture out to Europe. It could be France or Italy and this definitely won’t be as chaotic as going to your run of the mill culinary school. There is a lot you can learn in a Summer. I would expect you would skip all the boring theory and get straight down to it.
Of course you don’t have to fly all the way to Europe to do a pastry course. There are many summer pastry chef schools all around America and they will provide you with everything you need. Most of the instructors that run the courses are top notch when it comes to knowledge and have been in the industry for many years and are incredibly patient. People who attend a pastry summer school come out a large amount of skills and useful recipes. Anyone can make a chocolate cake, but it might take some time to learn do it as if it were sitting a patisserie in Paris!