Aspie Chefs?

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Any Aspie chefs here?

I am not a chef in the professional sense, but I do like to cook and bake. I do fairly well in the kitchen.

Being a chef strikes me as a bad proffesion for most with an ASD. There is ( or at least it can be on busy days ) lots of noise, you have to take orders that are often given by someone yelling them out and on top of that there would be a lot of stress to get the food done in time, which means it would be hard to get every detail done in time. At least that's what I think of it...

Anyhow; I do enjoy cooking when I have the energy. I try to stay away from those meals you just put in the microwave. My specialty is chocolate mousse ( it's the only thing I feel I can make properly =P )

I'm not a chef, but I love to cook. From scratch especially as much as possible.

I used to be a Sous Chef on Bourbon street in new orleans... and on Lee Circle... also in New Orleans...

I quit because I realized that I don't want to cook what you want to eat... I want to cook what I want to eat.

I trained to be a chef in culinary school and keep getting service/cashier type jobs. Being female doesn't help, also have a severe self-defeatist streak. I was hoping to become a pastry chef, but it seems like it's impossible without a good network. I haven't even kept in touch with people I met in school.

thanks for the replies. I love baking and give food gifts to family. I honestly wish I could just have the 'housewife' career and people in my life be okay with that. It's a lot of work to run a house completely and support a man that works full-time! (and we are supposed to also work full-time!! )

I'm very much interested in the Master Chef show. I like watching it. I get to see what options there are out there. I can imagine in the real world, not everyone gets their dream job. I'm a very picky eater and I was really thin until I started making my own food and learned what I liked.

Also the movie: The Five-Year Engagement (2012), is about a chef giving up his dream to move where his girlfriend goes to further her studies.

some random information

I guess I'm a chef, I worked the grill at a Red Lobster. I do love to cook.

To suggest somebody with Asperger's cannot function as a chef, or in any profession, is to ignore that it is a spectrum disorder, and expresses itself in widely divergent ways. This being said, I am a professional chef and pastry chef, with a Michelin-starred background. True, there are not many people with Asperger's working in kitchens, but I would suspect the rate to be roughly consistent with most professional trades that have similar job and skill requirements.

I started my own baking business making cakes for restaurants, and ended up serving 80 at my peak. I made 500 cakes a week and delivered 4 days a week to two different cities. Washington D.C., and Baltimore. I employed up to five people. I started with one recipe... a carrot cake, and ended up with about ten different cakes, pies, brownies, and a frozen cream cheese choc pie. I also made cookies for Mt. Vernon Inn...choc chip. My first account was a top DC restaurant, and word of my business spread out from there. I did it for fifteen years. It was wonderful being self-employed. When you make desserts for a living people love to see you coming.

Carrot Cake

1½ cups of oil
4 eggs
1 cup walnuts
1 cup bleached raisins
1 tablespoon soda
1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
5 cups grated carrots
……………………
Blend eggs and sugar until smooth. Add oil and stir until smooth. Add flour and spices and stir until smooth, but no further. Add walnuts raisins and carrots, and mix briefly.

Cook in a well-sprayed 10 inch tube cake pan at 350 degrees for 1½ hours, or until a test knife comes out clean.
…………………….
Frosting:
1 package cream cheese.
½ tablespoon melted butter
4 ½ cups powered sugar
……..
Soften cream cheese and butter until smooth and it peaks. Slowly add sugar.

I paid the bills, and sent my kids to private schools, and the recipe above was the start. There is no better recipe for carrot cake... trust me. :)

Last edited by tall-p on 25 Nov 2012, 3:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hey, tall-p, do you peel your carrots before you put them in a carrot cake? This is something I was wondering when I was thinking about making carrot cake recently.

Original question

Obviously (well, maybe not so obviously) I am not employed as a chef, although there was a point in my life I considered this. I enjoy cooking/baking in particular cakes and pies, although I would probably make anything given a recipe.

I also enjoy watching master chef, cupcake wars and great british bake off, although I expect the latter isn't available in other countries easily.

Not professional but I'm a fan of stir fry and want to expand on my pan fry cooking.

A funny thing... I named my business Boss Cakes (there is a popular show in the U.S. now called "Cake Boss")... that was back in 1978. I did peel my carrots. You get really good at it after a while. That said, it isn't really necessary to peel the carrots, a good wash is fine.

I started with one cake and took it to a top restaurant in DC. The chef liked it and said, "Bring me 8 tomorrow... you guys never work out." I served his restaurant the entire time I was in business... and that chef opened his own restaurant 10 years later, and brought me with him. Many fine restaurants buy their desserts from purveyors. I think even today anyone could walk in the back door of most restaurants (before 10:30 am!), and ask for the chef with my carrot cake under a nice cake dome, and he would appear. My recipe can also be used to make cupcakes.

Last edited by tall-p on 25 Nov 2012, 3:25 am, edited 2 times in total.

Thank you that's very interesting

I want to do my own dessert business. I'm convinced my salted caramel sauce and other stuff would actually sell. I like your idea of going door-to-door with a cake/dessert. I wonder if it's still the way to do things? I can't even get a job that way anymore, everything is online. Maybe a site like etsy.com could be a start? I would make Callebaut chocolate covered pretzels and peppermint candies too. I really like making cookies as well. I have a banana bread recipe that is also very good, where I use some brown sugar and buttermilk, makes it complex.

You'd probably be best off posting stuff on bulletin boards in random places like the grocery store and whatnot. Craigslist too.