These are more than just desserts; these pastries from Vegas chefs are works of art
Two Las Vegas pastry chefs are creating taste temptations with their award-winning creations — as if you need another reason to satisfy your sweet tooth.
Besides overseeing all of the dessert-making at the MGM Grand, Executive Pastry Chef Florent Cheveau is in training for the World Chocolate Masters competition October in Paris.
The French native earned the right to compete in the international championship by winning the title of America’s National Chocolate Master during a 2017 contest in Chicago.
Cheveau’s prize-winning works included Citropolis, a citrus-chocolate tart with a futuristic design. The tart, poised atop a black rock, featured a soft chocolate ganache center covered with orange jam, crunchy peanuts and topped with fresh mascarpone cream.
For the “desserts to go” category, Cheveau made “Green and Go,” a lemon chocolate cake with hazelnut praline. To represent recycling, the individual cakes were presented inside chunks of aluminum cans.
Cheveau works not only on desserts for various restaurants at MGM Grand but also on masterpieces showcased at the resort’s large-scale events.
A field of 20 national winners will face off in Paris. If he wins, Cheveau will be the first person representing the U.S. to claim the prize.
Five miles away at the off-Strip Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino, Executive Pastry Chef Stephen Sullivan’s creations are available in all the property’s restaurants.
Sullivan was recently named 2018’s Pastry Chef of the Year at the International Restaurant & Foodservice Show of New York.
To win the crown, Sullivan had to create 10 desserts. For the showcase round, using the theme “The Great Race,” he developed a towering sculpture featuring racehorses surrounded by flowers, all made of chocolate.
Sullivan began baking while serving in the Marine Corps during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. Before relocating to Las Vegas, he worked in pastry-making positions at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, the Fairmont San Francisco and the Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point.
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