For Claudia Fleming, life is sweet. She is up to her elbows in creamy custard and crumbling cookies all day long. At the end of the day, she is covered in powdered sugar and gobs of melted chocolate.
Sound delicious? Then perhaps Fleming has your dream job. She's a professional pastry chef. Her job is to create dozens of different, delectable desserts every day at New York City's Gramercy Tavern.
Her desserts must be ready for lunch and dinner, so Fleming starts her day at 7 and works until 9 p.m. But the long hours don't get her down. "It's like theater," she says. "You prepare all morning, and then the curtain goes up for lunch and dinner, and it's showtime."
Fleming, 40, has worked in restaurants for 15 years, but she wasn't always making desserts. She waited on tables, took cooking classes and held other jobs before becoming an assistant pastry chef in 1990. "My job was to make life easier for the chef by weighing things and greasing and flouring all the molds," says Fleming. She was a good apprentice. She watched her boss carefully and pored over recipe books to learn the tricks of the trade.
For the past five years, she's been the one whipping up new desserts. Fleming recommends that future chefs read cookbooks and get a job in a restaurant. "Cook at home," she says. "Work any job in a restaurant and learn what the guests want."
The best part of her job: "You produce something that you can smell and touch and taste," she says, "and then you make someone happy with it."