Rivers of Chocolate to flow at the Cooking Camp

By Fielding Melish

Looking for some sweet summer fun for your kids this summer? Well, the Cooking Camp www.summerartacademy.com will be running a week of Cooking Camp simply called “Chocolate Extravaganza”…

“We normally start the week with over 400 pounds of Chocolate and at times I feel the need to look for an Ooompa Loompa to help me because I will feel like Willie Wonka, we will have so much Chocolate flowing during this great week” stated an excited former Pasadena Le Cordon Bleu Graduate and Instructor and now Executive Chef of the Cooking Camp Chris Allen. See Photo

Kids will be able to treat their family to some amazing Chocolate delights like a Chocolate Decadence Cake that requires almost 1 pound of chocolate to make, Chocolate Truffle making with classic French Ganache and a great holiday gift basket with great ideas and techniques for children to create next holiday season.

The Cooking Camp offers 8 delicious individual weeks of tasty class selections for your Teens and Kids 7-17 years old choose. All classes are weekly Monday – Friday in 3 hour sessions 9-noon or 1:00pm-4:00pm, which makes the Cooking Camp a great solution for some of those idle summer hours that need constructive life skills, in a fun, delicious and safe camp environment.

Titles such as Cooking Around the Clock will feature a week of menus highlighting 5 different meal periods; breakfast, brunch, lunch, high tea and dinner. “This is a great class for kids to learn basic skills and recipes that they will use for the rest of their life like scrambled eggs and from scratch Mac n Cheese,” stated Chef Allen.

“We also offer a class that goes on a Worldwide culinary journey called the Global Gourmet,” continued Chef Allen. This week’s classes will feature a Tapas workshop, a homemade Raviolis day, Sushi making day and Taco Bar Friday with traditional and fruit salsas all done in a hands on cooking environment.

Other great cooking themed weeks are available like, Pizza~Pasta~Palooza which highlights the delicious foods of Italy including a Pizza party on Friday where kids get to create their own masterpiece Pizzas. “Cooking Camp has always taken pride in the fact that when kids learn how to make Pizza at Cooking Camp, they learn the entire process from feeding the yeast, kneading dough and making a proper Pizza sauce. We have never just given a child PopNFresh dough and tomato sauce and called it Pizza,” lamented Chef Allen.

Grillin n Chillin is a class that Chef Allen created to pay tribute to one of the first Food Network shows that he began to watch back in 1996 teaching him the difference between gas and charcoal cooking. “That show really influenced me into deciding to enroll at Le Cordon Bleu in 2001 to try to become a Chef,” lamented Allen.

Another great week for a young Baker would be Baker’s Delight, which features both sweet and savory baking recipes. Chef Allen said, “We have responded to the requests of many past campers to do an entire week of baking, so I included plenty of my personal favorites like Crème Brulee, Mini Beef Wellingtons and Classic French Tarte Tatin.”

The Cooking Camp is now heading into their 9th year serving the greater San Gabriel Valley area teaching kids of all ages the hands on tricks of the trade by Le Cordon Bleu trained Chef Instructors. Classes are filling fast, so help support a small local business www.summerartacademy.com then click Cooking camp icon to dive into the delicious world of Cooking Camp!!

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