Dessert earns sweet payoff

A $75,000 college scholarship in return for winning a recipe contest may seem excessive to some, but Amanda Kuck knows differently.

"I didn't get the scholarship handed to me on a silver platter," the 17-year-old Cody girl says. "I worked for it."

That work included making her Dizzy Pears with Almond Deflate a Souffle every day for three months, sometimes as many as three times per day. The recipe can take up to three hours to complete.

And it paid off. Kuck won the dessert portion of the 15th annual National High School Recipe Contest, which took place March 13-14 at Johnson and Wales University's Denver campus. She will have four years of college at Johnson and Wales paid for. She will be responsible for $9,000 per year for housing.

J&W calls itself "America's career university" and Kuck will enroll in the College of Culinary Arts. She's wanted to attend the college since middle school.

Her recipe was chosen from more than 700 entries as one of 20 finalists - 10 main entrees and 10 healthful desserts.

Kuck said it was a long process to create a recipe and then perfect it.

"I started with tropical desserts, using coconut and mango," she said. "But I decided this was something I had to do from my heart. I'm Greek, and that's where the cardamom and lemons come into my recipe. They're used often in Greek cooking."

Her heritage is responsible for her love of culinary arts, Kuck says. "I've been cooking all my life. When I'm in the kitchen, I zone out."

And desserts are her favorite thing to make.

"My dad is obsessed with chocolate, so I always make him desserts," she says, adding that her father David likes chocolate more than her fruity, healthy dessert.

The contest required that the recipes meet National Heart Association guidelines, equal four servings and be made within three hours. Kuck likes to make rich, Greek foods, so she had to use several alternate ingredients, such as soy flour, raw sugar and vegetarian gelatin. She also cooks for a family that can eat, so four servings is never enough.

After perfecting the recipe in three months, Kuck says she was able to make the dessert in 90 minutes, but at the contest she had "two minutes to spare."

She was intimidated by her competitors.

"They had so much more experience than me. They were from big cities, where they have all these cooking classes. All I ever had was the ProStart program (at Cody High School). That just teaches you the basics. They're cooking three hours per day, and on weekends they're competing."

Kuck began to worry the day before the competition when she went to check that contest organizers had supplied her with the right ingredients.

"They got me the wrong pears and these tiny oranges," she says.

Also the equipment was spread out in the kitchen, and she would have to share with the other competitors.

"And we had to use a convection oven. I had never used one before, so I was scared of the temperature, and I was afraid the souffle would deflate.

But in the end, it all came together.

"Something was with me," she says. "Everything went right."

It would be four hours from the time she finished her dessert until the banquet, where she learned she had won.

"It was amazing to me," she says of her win. "Nothing big like that ever happens to my family."

She learned later that although judges are supposed to take one taste of each meal or dessert, they finished hers.

"That made me feel pretty good."

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