9th-Annual For the Love of Chocolate Raises $189,000+ for The French Pastry School Scholarships
More than 850 Chicagoans looking to warm up their winter blues helped make things hot at the 9th Annual For the Love of Chocolate Gala on Feb. 22. The event brought the 1920s roaring back to life at the 130-year-old Union League Club of Chicago in the name of raising scholarship funds for students of The French Pastry School of Kennedy-King College at City Colleges of Chicago.
In the lobby alone, newsies hawked headlines, menacing gangsters and their carefree molls lined the marble staircase, a Madame bedecked guests for an old-fashioned photo booth, and a down-on-her-luck moonshiner from Redmoon Theater made bootleg gin in her bathtub.
For some guests, the evening began with a four-course dinner presented by Michael Garbin, CEC, AAC, HGT, executive chef of the Union League Club, featuring a menu that was inspired by the decadence of the jazz age. After dinner, two groups of revelers converged into the Dessert Dance Parties that were putting on the Ritz on two different floors, where they were treated to an indulgent evening of sampling sweets and savories and swinging tunes until midnight.
More than $189,000 was raised, all earmarked for funding student scholarships for The French Pastry School’s L’Art de la Pâtisserie and L’Art du Gâteau programs.
“Chef Jacquy [Pfeiffer] and I created The French Pastry School to provide the pastry world with well-trained pastry professionals,” says Chef Sébastien Canonne, M.O.F., cofounder and academic dean of The French Pastry School. “We are honored to see so many people coming together to support the education of passionate individuals who may not otherwise be able to afford it. This evening is the perfect example of how tightly-knit the food industry is; it is a great example for our students.”
A highlight of the evening was The Great Gâteau Cake Parade; more than 20 local pastry businesses and a group of students from After School Matters designed cakes that evoked the Roaring Twenties. Each featured Art Deco elements inspired by the architecture and fashion of the day complete with lots of gilding, sunbursts and pearls.
The next For the Love of Chocolate scholarships will be awarded to students who start L’Art de la Pâtisserie on July 9 and L’Art du Gâteau on Sept. 2. For more information on The French Pastry School, visit www.frenchpastryschool.com.