THIRD PLACE Ebow garnered third place honors at the 17th Annual U.S. Pastry Competition on March 5, 2006. The event highlights the talent of selected chefs who create showpieces, (using equal parts of sugar and chocolate used in different techniques), built around an eight inch cake. Called ‘America’s most prestigious pastry competition,’ for the assigned theme of ‘Carnival around the World’, Ebow created a “Visions of Venice,” showpiece. The colorful display featured painted pastillage masks and an abstraction of a gondola. His cake was composed of sour cherry mousse and marmalade, lavender crème, and vanilla linzer and biscuit Click here to find out more...

SILVER MEDAL In 2005, at the 137th Annual Salon of Culinary Art, Ebow challenged himself further by competing for the Medal of French Government, and finishing on November 13, 2005 with the Silver. To place, he had to demonstrate skills in wedding cake, occasional cake, petites fours, petit gateau, sugar sculpture and chocolate showpiece, all graded on a points scale. The wide stretch of Dadzie’s talents was evident at this event, where his colorful autumnal pieces seemed to defy gravity and show such attention to detail; they looked more man-made than hand made. As one to avoid realism in his art, he prefers creating faceless figures and abstract designs that are “out of the box.” For the 2005 Salon, he competed through Everlasting Impressions, the catering company where Dadzie is a pastry chef and owner.

GOLD MEDAL Through the Grand Hyatt, he entered his first competition working alone, at the 136th Annual Salon of Culinary Arts in November 2004. His first time solo, he walked away with the Trophy of the Commanderie des Cordons Bleus de France, and two gold medals of Paris Gourmet, placing first for best sugar and first for best chocolate presentations. His showpiece, entitled “A Picture Is worth a Thousand Crystals” depicts two separate figure abstractions in different mediums. A woman, posed in chocolate with arms behind her back, stands on a bridge over a pool of orange and green sugar callalillies. A man, blown in sugar to a white shiny satin, pensively wrapped in his own his arms, while a blown sugarbird hovers behind his head. Ask the artist what these free form pieces mean and he will regale a romantic story of unrequited love, written as a poem the pieced was based upon. Dadzie often uses poetry as part of his designing. With the first process being deep thought, he writes to focus his ideas, and then collects his energy, and gains momentum.

SECOND PLACE Dadzie has worked for The Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York since January 2003, with Executive Pastry Chef Eddie Wing Cheung, whom he assisted at the 16th Annual U.S. Pastry Competition in 2005, creating a showpiece for the theme ‘Romance.’ Together, they won first place for Chef Cheung’s cake, and second place for the “The First Dance” showpiece Ebow designed, offering an embracing couple, carved in chocolate, with sugar roses, musical notes and piano keys swirling around their captured moment. Dadzie hopes to “have a long relationship with the Hyatt,” where they prepare desserts and showpieces for banquets and restaurant functions.

		E-Mail Chef Big E@aol.com all confectionery designs copyright 2008 Ebow Dadzie