A Sweet Career!

Ever since she was a little girl, Greta Sparks loved to bake. "My fondest memories were during the Christmas season. We baked so many cookies, and candies; we would give them to everyone. Even today it makes me very happy to bake for people just to make them happy."

Thanks to the education she received at Sullivan's National Center for Hospitality Studies, Greta has a successful career doing just that.

Today she is the pastry chef at Sweet Surrender Dessert Cafe in Louisville where all the desserts are made from scratch on the premises, using only the finest of ingredients. The tasty results of which have been honored with eight Best of Louisville Awards and six LEO Readers Choice Awards.

Greta, who earned her Baking & Pastry Arts degree in 2007, remembers how "helpful the instructors were, not only in the baking program, but in all my classes." And she still chuckles when recalling a funny experience in "Chef Scott Turner's lab; we were making cake mix in the 80 quart mixer and he had just given us a big lecture about making sure the mixer speed was on one, and explained that we needed to check the mixing speed before we started. We poured all of the ingredients in the mixer and HE turned it on and didn't notice that it was on speed three; cake mix flew everywhere. It was so funny because no one said a word, we just started cleaning it up!"

A great object lesson!

Greta feels that experience "gave me a better perspective of what the industry would be like as far as cleanliness, being prepared for unexpected things to happen and what to do if they did," adding, "You can't teach a student everything about the industry but you can give them real life examples and see how they will work through it."

Greta also had some good advice for students. "Don't wait for a chef to tell you to do something; always be on the look out for what you could be doing in advance. Don't think you will be able to sleep in when you've been out too late; customers don't wait on you. If you can't produce what they want, they will look elsewhere. Always be one step ahead at all times."