BHS Culinary Students Learn from Guest Instructor

During testing week at Berkley High School, Joe Fredal, Intro to Foods and Bake Shoppe teacher, invited a guest instructor, Heather Landau, to come and teach students new skills. Ms. Landau is the owner of Heather's Homemade Cakes & Catering and is a 2004 BHS graduate. She connected to the classes through her niece, Zapiex Falcon, a student of Mr. Fredal’s.

In each of Mr. Fredal's three Bake Shoppe classes, Ms. Landau demonstrated how a baker would properly frost a multi-layer cake, starting with crumb coating, then finish frosting and decorating using piping bags and frosting tips. She gave the students insider tips on which tools to use for all parts of the decorating process so they could execute professional looking multi-layer cakes. The students followed up by frosting their own cakes. Mr. Fredal shared, “These skills are going to be used later in the semester when the students' teams compete with each other in the Great Cake Bake Competition. They'll also be able to use the frosting skills when they decorate cupcakes in a Cupcake Wars competition.”

During the Intro to Foods class, Ms. Landau provided a knife use and cutting demonstration.  She taught the students the proper way to dice and julienne cut vegetables including carrots, celery and onions that will be used to make a mirepoix that goes into chicken noodle soup that students were preparing to make. She also brought in a set of knives to show the students what different knives are used by chefs and explained what types of foods that each of the knives is primarily used to cut. Ms. Landau also gave an explanation about how to properly sharpen knives and knife safety.

Mr. Fredal said, “All in all, it was a great learning experience for the students, who ultimately enjoyed eating the foods they created with their new skills! Ms. Landau expressed how much she enjoyed her guest instructing and we hope to have her back again during future semesters to share her professional knowledge with our students.”