Isabel:

The Beach Pastry: sparks the remembrance of a childhood memory many people share and provides an occasion for reminiscence through taste. 

The Beach Pastry combines beach-themed flavors, colors, and textures to evoke the memory of a childhood beach vacation. Prepared in a circular dish filled with blue gelatin, the dessert consists of a shell-shaped macaron on top, surrounded by a sprinkling of crushed graham crackers to represent the sandy beach and inside the macarons there is some seaweed to give a clear illustration and add a slightly salty flavor. By evoking childhood memories and reminiscences, this dessert could help someone who suffers from memory loss, someone who is having a difficult time in their life, or anyone who wants to experience a new kind of dessert. The Beach Pastry can help heal people by reminding them of their past, of how far they have come or what they have lost and helping integrate them with their past selves and emotions, specifically the bittersweet or nostalgic emotions and moments.

Aidan:

The Beach Pastry: a pastry meant to spark the memory of a beach vacation. 

The Beach Pastry is served on a laser-cut plate made out of acrylic. The pastry consists of a thin layer of blue jello, crushed graham crackers as sand, salty strudel as rocks, a shell shaped macaron with salted caramel filling inside of it, and some steamed seaweed for a slimy salty taste. Going beyond a traditional themed cake, like one with blue frosting and fish decorations, The Beach Pastry hopes to evoke the vivid, multi-sensorial feel of playing by the beach. This would be significant for anyone who has played at the beach and even more significant to someone who has spent many days at the beach. The Beach Pastry is significant to me because I have spent so much time making sand castles at the beach and going boogie boarding on waves. 

Izzy Ramras: 

Layered is a compilation of pastries with many different flavors that the consumer can taste simultaneously. When the consumer eats Layered, they can experience, but ultimately avoid the overwhelming feeling of walking into a bakery and facing a tough decision. The aromas and pastries all look so appealing and choosing just one or two pastries can be difficult. With Layered, this choice is no longer necessary. Layered consists of numerous components: puff pastry, Nutella, chocolate cake, more puff pastry, cheesecake, lemon curd, a cinnamon bun, and a pyramid of raspberry eclairs topped with whipped cream and fresh raspberries. Additionally, the chocolate cake, lemon curd, and cinnamon bun are all hidden from view. In order to see and eat them, you have to cut into the 'cake'. The chocolate cake is sandwiched between the puff pastries and surrounded by a row of raspberries, the lemon curd is located in the center of the cheesecake, and the cinnamon bun is concealed inside the concentric eclairs. This element of surprise is an additional component of the overwhelming, yet exciting experience of Layered. Because of the richness of this high-calorie concoction, Layered is best a shared dessert eaten over time.

Izzy LaCava: 

The Layered pastry was created for a consumer who wants to experience multiple flavors at once. Many different types of pastries combine to form a dessert that looks like a cake with a nine-inch diameter. This pastry is good for anyone who cannot decide which pastry to have or who wants to try all of them in a unique form. Layered contains the most popular aspects of each pastries instead of the full pastries to create one single dessert that mixes well and can be favorited by many.  The consumer can cut the pastry into slices or pick it apart. The pastry consists of a large brownie surrounded by raspberries and sandwiched between two layers of puff pastry spread with Nutella. The next layer contains a cheesecake filled with lemon curd. On top of that, multiple circular eclairs are stacked on top of each other to create a pyramid. Finally, the pastry is topped with whipped cream and raspberries. Hidden within the eclairs is a cinnamon bun, to give the consumer the feeling of waking up on Christmas morning and discovering a surprise. Ultimately, this pastry would be ideal a solution to solving the difficult decision of choice.  

Daria's Brief: The  Cake Kit is a DIY cake kit that comes in a portable box with a variety of pastry creams, toppings, and flavor injections and two pieces of plain, pre-baked cake as vessels for all the flavors. All of the elements are rather simple of their own, but together they can make a great dessert. All of the creams, toppings, and flavor injections are "green" flavors (mint, lime, etc.) to add an element of surprise when constructing a dessert. Though the user is pretty sure what flavors they are putting on their cake, they will not know for sure what flavor they added until they taste it. The box also has fold-down sides that have a built-in plate and utensils, which allows the user to bring the box anywhere to build, plate, and eat their dessert.

The Cake Kit is an accessible way to start making one's own dessert without having to make everything from scratch. By making it easier to start creating pastries, it will lead to engaging more people in baking and preparing the food they eat in general. Making one's own food and knowing what one eats is more important than ever in today's world filled with McDonald's and Oreos, and the Cake Kit helps people eat healthier by introducing them to the art of making their own food.

Tony's Brief:

The Cake Kit is a pastry kit that comes in a box, the user can use the kit to assemble their ideal pastry by changing ingredients and ingredient amounts. Lik a house kit, the user can change something complex into something that they want. The user can do this by adding more or fewer cremes, soaks. or topping, or none at all.

This pastry kit is designed to give the user satisfaction of making something for themselves., and also to be similar to a puzzle. The user can use all of the ingredients, very few, or somewhere between. Two fully ready to eat cakes are provided in the kit. The box it comes in starts out small and opens to be very large. The pastry has a certain amount of ingredient combinations but the amounts can be adjusted to give preferred sweetness and flavor levels. The project gives the user a sense of satisfaction from making something for themselves.

For those who tire of the usual eating experience, Pastry Infinity will provide a novel derangement of the senses. Pastry Infinity is a pastry set inside an infinity pastry box, featuring mirrors on the inside to provide the effect that the pastry goes on forever, as the reflection goes on forever. This project does not engage any social issue, or change the world in any significant way, but it challenges the way people perceive the eating experience. Why do people eat food, beyond the need for sustenance? What do people think when they eat food? What do people want to get out of the eating experience? These are all important questions to ask in order to understand how people think when they are hungry, and what senses people rely on  as they eat. The project is designed for someone who wants an atypical eating experience; someone who wants to be enlightened and excited while eating the pastry. It challenges the conventional eating experience, as pastries especially are usually served to the customer in a bag or box, before they walk out of the pastry shop. The idea behind this project is to enjoy the pastry in a more conceptual and interactive way. The puff pastry covers the entire square inside of the box, and the reflective walls around the pastry create an infinite effect as the diner looks into it. Every part of the box is attached except for the bottom, and to commence eating, they can simply pick up the top  and dig into their puff pastry. The pastry features a cream filling, with a toasted meringue topping. When done, they'll wish the pastry actually did go on forever. 

Raphaël : 

Diner in the Dark:  A tall, monolithic glass of varying chocolate experiences that can only be analyzed under intense focus of the senses. This deviation is created by five layers of intricately designed chocolate pastries and creams to highlight the most popular and wild flavors of chocolate.

Nowadays, eating food revolves more and more around the appearance of the food rather than its actual taste. Indeed, the appearance of a dish has a significant influence on the customer, and more and more chefs are creating extraordinary looking dishes to attract people. However, the visual appearance of some dishes can take away some of the taste by tricking someone's mind into analyzing a flavor. For example, if one sees a chocolate cookie, he will already have the flavor of the desert in his mind even before tasting it. Diner in the Dark removes the visual sense of the consumer to highlight the other senses, specifically taste, smell, and touch. The different layers that constitute this dish are each made of a different chocolate flavor as well as texture. Diner in the Dark also brings up the importance of being sensorially connected to the world. As technology becomes a bigger part of modern life, vision and hearing have become the dominant senses. However, it is equally important to develop and continue to enrich one's experience through smell, taste, and touch. 

Maxwell:

Trust Your Sense: A tall, monolithic glass of varying chocolate concoctions that can only be analyzed under intense focus of the senses. This deviation is created by five layers of intricately designed chocolate pastries and creams to highlight the most popular and wild flavors of chocolate.

In the modern culinary world, so much of the food consumers buy is marketed to elicit the tastes in memory before they've even opened the package.  Trust Your Sense reattunes the senses towards food by removing the one thing food corporations influence the most: sight. With the intention of magnifying the dishes' different flavors, Trust Your Sense blurs one's premonitions of taste with its mysterious presentation and experiential design. Because the cup is filled with hardened chocolate ganache,  the diner cannot gauge what or how many different flavors will be experienced. As they make their first entrance into the dish, they find a thick layer of milk chocolate ganache, which seems to fill the entire cup. Then, they reach a crunchy layer of crushed hazelnuts, followed by white chocolate jello and candied grapefruit chunks. After this, thinly spread Nutella that surrounds pretzel bit inserts is sandwiched by two layers of salty cake. Second to last, a layer of milk pastry cream with two maraschino cherries acts as a palate cleanser before a layer of spicy chocolate ganache. Spiced with chili powder, the ganache creates a finale to the experience of this wide range of flavors. Trust Your Sense is—at heart—a simply enjoyable experience. It makes the diner think about which flavors they can relate to and which they cannot. This re-equilibration  and exploration of food is lost in the modern setting and culture of supermarkets by marketed packages that obscure the actual flavors that one will experience.

Kevin 

This pastry is supposed to surprise and shock the user. To create an awkward experience for the eater, it has a balloon filled with popping boba on the inside so that when they try to eat the dessert with a fork, the balloon will pop and boba will go everywhere. The balloon will stay in one piece when it pops so it is easy to get out of the pastry as needed. The pastry is made with a simple tart crust lined with chocolate, There is a layer of m&ms and gummy bears on the inside to make it look like a kid could have made it. After the candy, there is a layer of sponge cake to separate the different layers. On top of that, there is the balloon filled with boba submerged in creme so it is hidden away. Above that, there is another layer of sponge cake to top it off. This pastry can appeal to anyone who likes sweets. Kids would probably like this more than adults because of the candy on the inside. 

In Pastry Architecture, students will be creating desserts inspired by ideas from Pagu's chef and owner Tracy Chang. We will work with New York City-based pastry chef and architect Savinien Caracostea to create pastries that capture concepts and experience in their taste, texture and form.