On Thursday, May 8, a line of people waiting for a taste of artisan treats wrapped around McClaskey Culinary Institute and into Gaiser Hall. The annual Baking Capstone, led by Chef Alison Dolder, is one of the biggest culinary events of the year.

Second-year baking students spent weeks testing recipes for their very own pop-up menus. One student created a fairy forest, pastries arranged on stumps, and red button mushrooms sprouting from the table. Another decorated eclairs like dachshunds. Yet another fused Mexican flavors with Viennoiserie, serving elote and concha flavored croissants.

“I learned I’m more capable than I thought I was”

While stressful to take charge of their own pop-ups, meeting the challenge gave students confidence.

Student Andrew Kehler, above, who presented a table bursting with artisan breads in baskets and on bamboo cutting boards, said, “I learned I’m more capable than I thought I was. I was telling my classmates, “It’s freaking me out, it’s kind of scary…everything turned out perfectly fine.”

Katelynn House, above, who showed a variety of creative Viennoiserie, shared, “The first few weeks I was trying things out, practicing. Then, the last couple of weeks I really cracked down. Then today came along, and it was a ride. But I did finish on time, and it’s beautiful.”

Katelynn’s favorite bake? The orange cinnamon rolls.

It was clear how much Chef Melanie Hendry inspired the students. Kehler said, “I chose to do bread for my pop-up because it is one of the activities that most resonated with me in the bakery. Chef Melanie showed a passion for it, and it kind of rubbed off on me… I love that I can take my time with bread. You kind of get to know it more intimately… it is a lot of concentration, knowing what you’re doing… taking your time, being patient with it and working with it.”

Kehler was most proud of the cinnamon sugar monkey bread, which he said was a surprise that came together at the last minute.

Leaving a legacy with a cookbook zine

This year, Chef Melanie collaborated with librarians Andrea Berg and Katy Anastasi on a new idea: a cookbook zine. Over several months, the librarians hosted workshops guiding students to design uniquely colorful pages. Captivated, the students spent hours in the library gluing, cutting, and drawing pages with pop-up recipes, stories, jokes, and coloring pages.

The zine—titled “Eat the Pastriarchy”—inspired sprawling conversations about collaboration, legacy, creativity, and privacy.

A copy of the zine will be archived in the zine collection in Cannell Library, so anyone can sneak a peek at the students’ baking secrets.

Berg shared, “The library was excited to support and excited to feature the cookbook zine in our zine library as another way for these bakers to have a lasting legacy at Clark. We had so much fun working with the baking students, they were so creative and supportive of each other and were excited about the zine project as a way to celebrate their own work and inspire future generations of Clark bakers.”

When the librarians brought the finished zines to the capstone, the students immediately circled to rifle through the pages and see their work in print, giggling and showing their friends and family.

About Tod and Maxine McClaskey Culinary Institute

At the Tod and Maxine McClaskey Culinary Institute at Clark College, we are building on nearly 60 years of excellence in culinary education to offer programs that prepare students to meet the growing demand for culinary and hospitality professionals. Our programs emphasize the mastery of the fundamentals as well as management and critical thinking skills to prepare students for a range of career opportunities.

Working in a new state-of-the-art facility, students gain real-world experience in high-volume food production, service, and retail settings. The Culinary Institute also creates a community space on campus that highlights the growing influence of food on our culture while giving students valuable hands-on experience in a production kitchen, retail bakery, food kiosks, and a full-service dining room.

Photos: Clark College/Carly Rae Zent

At the 2025 Washington State Leadership and Skills Conference, students across the state demonstrated outstanding talent, passion, and professionalism in career and technical education.

I’m proud to share that our Cuisine Management students brought home both gold and silver medals at the 2025 SkillsUSA Culinary Championship, held on March 28 at Clover Park Technical College in Lakewood, Washington. Competing against the region’s top culinary students, our team rose to the challenge and represented Clark College with excellence.

We proudly earned both a gold and a silver medal in our respective culinary category. Congratulations to these McClaskey Culinary Institute students:

• Adamaris Rodriguez: Gold Medal
• Holly Spring: Silver Medal

About the competition

• The competition encompassed both hot and cold food preparation and presentation. Competitors demonstrated their knowledge and skills through the production of menu items meeting industry standards.
• Competitors were evaluated on organization, knife skills, cooking techniques, creative presentation, sanitation and food safety, and the quality and flavor of their prepared items.
• College/post-secondary students worked from a market basket format and created their own menus using required fundamental cooking techniques.

The final awards ceremony took place at the Hilton DoubleTree Hotel, where dozens of students were recognized for their excellence in various skills competitions.  It was an incredible honor to stand among such dedicated competitors and to represent our program with distinction.

This achievement is a testament to the hard work, dedication, and passion for culinary arts that we strive for every day. We are incredibly grateful for the unwavering support of our mentors, instructors, managers and front-line support staff, and everyone who has contributed to our growth and success.

We are also happy to share that our articulation partner, Fort Vancouver High School, a community magnet skills high school, won gold in the baking category in the high school division. Fort Vancouver’s program is led by Chef David Finnie and Rebecca Angel.

Thank you for celebrating this milestone with us. We are proud of our students, and we look forward to continuing to push the boundaries of our craft and representing our program at the highest level.

National SkillsUSA Championships

Next up: Nationals! We’re headed to compete at the National SkillsUSA Championships from June 23-27 in Atlanta, Georgia.

SkillsUSA’s National Leadership & Skills Conference (NLSC) is the largest gathering of America’s future skilled workforce and the ultimate recognition of excellence in career and technical education.

Held in Atlanta each June, the NLSC is a week-long celebration of the skilled trades and the accomplishments of career-ready leaders from across the United States. The event brings together more than 17,500 attendees, including students, instructors, industry partners, government officials, administrators and more.

The highlight of the NLSC is the SkillsUSA Championships, where more than 6,500 state champions compete for national gold, silver, and bronze medals in 114 skilled and leadership competitions.

Learn more:

• Washington SkillsUSA Championships: https://skillsusawashington.org/
• National SkillsUSA Championships: https://www.skillsusa.org/events/national-leadership-skills-conference

Photos submitted by Aaron Guerra.

The culinary garden at Clark College is seeking volunteers who enjoy gardening and can volunteer even an hour a week.

On a warm July afternoon, James “Sonny” Demartini, a cuisine instructor at Clark College, spread the broad leaves of a kohlrabi plant to examine a purple turnip-looking vegetable growing at ground level to determine when it would be ready to harvest (pictured below). Pointing to yellow marigold flowers planted nearby, he explained that the flower’s strong scent repels flies, aphids, and other insects that eat the plants.

Then he tore the tip of a green leaf from a Florentino cauliflower, popped it into his mouth, chewed, and smiled.

“What flavor! That’s what I’m talking about!” he exclaimed.

Chef Demartini was instrumental in creating the culinary garden just outside the college’s Tod and Maxine McClaskey Institute. Now in its third year, the garden is prolific. During the summer, culinary students harvest herbs, vegetables, and fruit from the garden and use the produce in their cuisine and baking classes to create food for the college community. On this day, students harvested lemon verbena from the garden and added it to the panna cotta dessert served in the student-run restaurant.

In addition to kohlrabi, fennel bulb, Swiss chard, baby carrots, leeks, and a variety of edible flowers are ready to harvest. At this time of year, when the garden is prolific, Chef Demartini says the culinary garden could use more hands to help with weeding and watering.

“We could use more volunteers,” he said. “Even if someone can volunteer for an hour or two a week, that would be helpful.”

Inspired by Ohio garden

In creating Clark’s culinary garden, Chef Demartini was inspired by Chef’s Garden and its Culinary Vegetable Institute, a 300-acre family farm in Huron, Ohio. He first visited the farm 14 years ago when he was a culinary student. He and two recent Clark Cuisine graduates, James and Amanda, had the opportunity to tour the farm June 17-19. They toured enormous greenhouses growing microgreens and experimental herbs, and they enjoyed tasting the farm’s bounty. They also volunteered in the farm’s test kitchen and prepared food for the farm’s workers and for a wedding event.

Chef Demartini experienced a full-circle moment when his mentor and old friend, farmer Lee Jones, came by to say hello, wearing his trademark denim overalls and red bowtie. The Jones family represents four generations on the farm.

“It was a prescient moment for me,” said Chef Demartini. “When I was a culinary student, Farmer Lee impressed upon me the importance of ‘taking care of the soil’ and ‘eating with the season.’ My interactions with Farmer Lee shaped who I am now, as both a chef and a person. Fast forward fourteen years, and Farmer Lee is seeing the seeds that he sowed in me, with the next generation of culinarians under my wing. It was an incredible moment!”

What’s planted in Clark’s garden

Previously, the concrete planters just outside McClaskey Culinary Institute contained low-maintenance shrubs that didn’t flower or provide food for humans or insects. Three years later, this garden has created a welcoming entrance to Gaiser Hall. People stop to admire the garden.

• Now the concrete planters are bursting with vegetables and fragrant herbs, including sage, lemon verbena, mint, rosemary, sorrel, lovage, parsley, and chives. Bees, butterflies, and other pollinators flit from flower to flower collecting nectar and pollen.
• Edible wildflowers do double duty by attracting pollinators.
• Trellises support grapevines and hops.
• Fruit trees include plum, quince, fig, and five varieties of espalier apple and pear trees.
• A dozen varieties of sunflowers provide edible petals and seeds for recipes.
• Nasturtiums provide edible petals, garnish, and an infusion for oils and vinegars.

The seeds of Clark’s culinary garden

• The culinary space at Clark College was renovated in 2017 with a grant from the Tod and Maxine McClaskey Foundation. Although blueprints included culinary gardens wrapping around three sides of the building, there was no funding for a garden.
• Chef Demartini, a lifelong gardener, and Fay Shorten, a stockroom attendant in the college’s food services department, were determined that a lack of funding would not become a barrier for creating a kitchen garden for their students.
• They spent about $8,000 in grant money. Galvanized stock tanks were repurposed into raised beds. Some plants and seeds were donated, but they purchased others.
• Demartini, Shorten and volunteers cleared unused space outside the building and created gardens including herbs, vegetables, berries, and fruit trees.
• The college’s grounds crew revamped an existing irrigation system.
• Composting organic kitchen scraps: Every day the culinary classes create a mountain of food scraps—from eggshells to carrot tops. Instead of throwing them into the garbage, all organic food scraps are converted into nutrient-rich compost. Demartini converted an industrial woodchipper into a mulcher that chops food waste into rich, organic matter that immediately can be added to the soil.
• Volunteers help amend the soil, plant, weed, water, and harvest—but more volunteers are needed.

Volunteer in the culinary garden

• Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.
• Monday through Thursday, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
• Contact: Chef Sonny Demartini at jdemartini@clark.edu

Photos: Clark College/Susan Parrish

Gage Gwynn was pursuing a general associate degree at Clark College when he mentioned to his math professor that he enjoyed baking and had heard positive reviews of Clark’s Professional Baking and Pastry Arts program. His professor talked so effusively about it that Gwynn eventually enrolled in the program.

“I’m really good at math,” he explained. “And I also like baking. They go together.”

Gwynn was one of eight second-year baking students who presented their capstone project to the college community and their families on May 9 in the McClaskey Culinary Institute Food Court in Gaiser Hall.

An enthusiastic crowd of Clark students, staff, and community members waited in a very long line for an opportunity to sample artful and delicious baked goods prepared by the students.

The much-awaited annual event is the culmination of their capstone project. They spent the first five weeks of spring term creating their final presentations. Each student chose their focus: bread, plated dessert, or viennoisserie (laminated doughs).

Before the ravenous crowd was allowed to storm the bakery tables, all the baked goods were judged by professional bakers who examined the baked goods, asked students questions about their techniques and ingredients—and then tasted everything.

Finally, the judges finished. By this time, the crowd was growing restless. The line snaked through the food court, down the hall, and nearly to the north entrance of Gaiser Hall.

Then Alison Dolder, Professional Baking and Pastry Arts instructor stepped to the front of the waiting crowd and introduced the 2024 capstone project. She stepped aside as people made a beeline to tables where baking students stood behind mouth-watering displays of their baked goods. 

The bakers patiently offered samples of pain au chocolat, tiramisu, cambozola cheesecake Napoleon, salted caramel cream puff, chocolate babka, and much more to the eager tasters.

Real-world experience

These students have completed their classes at Clark. Next, they will get hands-on real-world work experience immersed in internships in professional bakeries in Vancouver and Portland. During the five-week internships, students must work a minimum of 24 hours per week. Some will work more.

In June these students will earn an associate in applied technology degree in Professional Baking and Pastry Arts Management.

Meet the Bakers

Miranda Kirby

Capstone focus: Viennoiserie (laminated doughs)
Internship: Bakeshop in Portland

Isabella Alvarez

Capstone focus: Individual desserts
Internship: Di Tazza Gourmet Coffee and Café, Vancouver 

Max Harrell

Capstone focus: Viennoiserie (laminated doughs)
Internship: Forevers Bakery, Hazel Dell

Genesis Skjeie

Capstone focus: Viennoiserie (laminated doughs)
Internship: Di Tazza Gourmet Coffee and Café, Vancouver 

Annika Davila

Capstone focus: Individual desserts
Internship: Farina Bakery, Portland

Emily Baker

Capstone focus: Individual desserts, particularly petit four
Internship: Chandelier Bakery, Vancouver 

Jessica Ray

Capstone focus: Individual desserts
Internship: Dream Cakes, Portland

Gage Gwynn

Capstone focus: Artisan breads, particularly sourdough
Internship: Fleur De Lis Bakery & Cafe, Portland

View photos on our Flickr page: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBpucE
Photos Clark College/Jenny Shadley