Jenny McCoy: From Chicago’s Top Restaurants to Cookbooks & Canelés

Pastry Arts Podcast

After attending the Baking and Pastry Program at Chicago’s Kendall College, Jenny McCoy landed positions in a variety of Chicago’s top restaurants, including Charlie Trotter’s, Blackbird, Gordon and Bittersweet Bakery. It was in these kitchens where Jenny learned to refine her palate and develop her talent for composing seasonal desserts.

Following her formative experiences in fine dining, Jenny took a brief hiatus from professional baking to travel and complete a BA in Food Writing at DePaul University. When Jenny returned to the pastry kitchen, she oversaw three restaurant pastry departments for Emeril Lagasse, as well as contribute weekly to the Cooking Blog at Emerils.com. While working at Emeril's Delmonico, Jenny was a nominee for the PastryScoop.com Best Dessert Menu Award in 2006. It wasn’t long, however, before she felt the pull of New York City’s vibrant culinary scene.

In New York, she headed the pastry departments of top restaurant including Marc Forgione, A Voce and Tom Colicchio’s Craft, which earned three stars from The New York Times during her tenure. Jenny was also a pastry instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York from 2010 to 1018, and is the author of Desserts for Every Season (Rizzoli, 2013) and Modern Eclairs (HMH, 2016). Jenny’s newest venture is Recette, a bakery that sells handmade pastries such as French canelés at farmers’ markets and occasional pop-ups in Chicago.

In this episode you’ll learn about:

• How Jenny got hooked on pastry and baking
• Her experiences working in some of Chicago’s top restaurants
• Her hiatus from pastry when she traveled to broaden her culinary horizons
• Running the pastry departments of three Emeril Lagasse restaurants in NOLA
• Moving to NYC and earning three stars from the NY Times at Craft
• How she co-founded Cissé Trading Company, a line of hot cocoa and baking mixes
• Her experience writing two dessert cookbooks
• All about Recette, her latest baking adventure
• And much more!