Geneva High cooking students have a heart
Geneva High School culinary students put a deliciously decadent twist on the standard bake sale fundraiser for charity.
Teens in the Foods II classes and the Culinary Club have been churning out 6-inch heart-shaped chocolate cheesecakes - about 325 - and selling them for $5 apiece.
The proceeds are going to help send a Geneva High student to a national television production convention, and to help with medical bills for his older brother, who was severely injured in a fall.
The bakers made 275 to begin with, but people came back begging to order more last Friday, just before Valentine's Day.
"It was wonderful. Those cheesecakes went so fast," teacher Linda Hallstrom told her third-period students Tuesday morning, before dispersing them to make batter and crusts, assemble boxes and put together the spring-form pans. Apron-clad students sprang into action, with a caveat from Hallstorm: "Wash your hands. Don't play with your hairnet."
The project was suggested by students in the school's television production program. They took orders and delivered the cakes.
"I never expected we would go over 300," Hallstrom said.
Sodexo, the school's cafeteria caterer, let them use its large commercial convection ovens and refrigerators.
The cooking students tinkered with different cheesecake batters.
Monika Toldness, 17, a senior, kept track of the numbers. Does she like cheesecake?
"I used to," she said this week.
Steve Sledzinski, 18, a senior, was the top ganache man, both Hallstrom and students said. His secret was to pour the heated cream over the chocolate pieces and let it sit a bit before stirring it, incorporating "a good amount of air." Sledzinski has restaurant experience, having worked at the Geneva Family Restaurant and now at Starbucks at Geneva Commons.
"I see it as a passion ... a wooing device," he said of cooking and baking. "Drawing a heart in chocolate has its benefits."
The students are looking to do other fundraisers. Normally, the classes just cook for themselves. "It's good for them to realize it's not only their mouths that they have to feed," Hallstrom said.