It was after a casual chat with his students in the Satellite Center’s culinary team class about how much they loved Chantilly cake at Whole Foods that Chef Pat Phelan decided he might have found a tempting lesson to get them started in cooking.And it couldn’t be just any gastronomical challenge, they would have to duplicate the Chantilly cake.
“I knew it was something they’d enjoy eating and it would get them motivated to solve the problem,” Phelan said.
Indeed it did, so much so that it became readily apparent baking a cake was just the thing to help the students focus on what he envisioned would come with the project: collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking and evaluation.
“They just found the recipe and dived in,” he said. “They didn’t really want to critique it or plan it. They just wanted to jump in and do it, which creates problems. It’s not a good recipe.”
The class was divided into teams and each told they could only ask Phelan six questions as a team.
“I wanted them to work and try to solve the problem as a group first,” he said. “I was trying to break them of the habit early of asking me about every problem they had to solve and they did good. They solved it themselves.”
What started as the deceptively easy task of baking a cake became a lesson in teamwork and producing a quality food for the public.
“The teamwork is part of learning to rely on each other to make a plate of food for a customer as good as it can be,” Phelan said. “It’s also getting it out of the kitchen in a timely manner.”
In his 12th year teaching culinary arts at the Satellite Center in Luling, Phelan also brings practical experience to the classroom. He worked 20 years in the restaurant business in varying capacities from bus boy to chef, representing an industry that is the largest employer in Louisiana.
When it came time to taste their creation, he knew whether they’d accomplished the lesson.
“Close but not the real cigar,” Phelan said.
They had gone straight to copycat recipes on the Internet instead of doing what he considered the obvious way to know the true sublime taste of this sublime dessert.
“We talked and reflected on what they could have done to get them closer to the cake,” Phelan said. “We should have bought the cake, looked at it, tasted it and compared our practice cake to the real cake, but they should have asked this be done. Instead of only researching the Internet, you have to go out and try the food.”
Ultimately, he said they found not being able to ask more questions frustrating. But they finally became expeditious with their inquiries and started finding answers on their own.
Overall, he said the baking a cake and problem-solving lesson was a success.
“The cakes all turned out pretty well,” Phelan said. “They did really well. I was proud of them.”
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