Holidays Mean Food, Sweet Food!

Among the 60-quart Hobart mixers and rumbling convection ovens Anne Dwyer was making cake one day last week. Not cake for a gingerbread house like the one she made for the Prime Time House fundraiser, bringing in $5,000 for that cause, but her Guinness chocolate layer cake wrapped in ganache, a favorite among Route 7 Grill customers in Great Barrington where she is the pastry chef. It all started with an Easy-Bake Oven; you know, the kind with light bulbs, which Dwyer, age 8, used to whip up confections for her big brother, Dan, and everyone else in sight in New Bedford, MA, where she grew up. She kept on cooking, and after two years of college she threw over business and accounting and headed for culinary school, learning the tricks of chocolate and sugar and the chemistry of baking. She has worked in test kitchens, and restaurants and bake shops ever since. Now she has her own business based in Salisbury: Savories and Sweets Custom Baking. “I’m off the book, now,” she says as she whips up a cake batter. She can put together a bûche de Noël or a lemon tart without a recipe, telling from the look and smell and feel of a mixture how it will bake up. Her best tip for home bakers is “taste as you go,” she says. “And enjoy it.” For information about Dwyer’s holiday menu, call 508-728-2234 or email aedwyer@hotmail.com.