When Savanna Brodar, Executive Pastry Chef of The Country Club of North Carolina in Pinehurst, N.C., was tasked with creating a dish for the North Carolina Restaurant & Lodging Association (NCRLA) Chef Showdown, she turned to childhood memories of her grandmother for inspiration.
The result—The Pinehurst Beehive—features honey mascarpone mousse, candied sweet potatoes, candied bacon, spiced pecans and brown butter oat cake. The base is a white chocolate beehive made using a mold Brodar created herself.
“I wanted to make a hollowed-out beehive, but I could not find any molds I liked,” she says, “so I made it myself using melted-down gelatin and a beehive salt and pepper shaker I found at Buc-ee’s while on vacation. It worked surprisingly well—and really captured the look I was going for.”
Brodar tempered white chocolate that she colored yellow with cocoa butter and coated the inside of the gelatin mold, pouring out the excess so it created a hollow beehive.
“After the beehive was made, I decided to fill the inside of the hive with a few different components that reminded me of my childhood, the main ingredient being North Carolina sweet potatoes,” she says. “My Granny always made the absolute best sweet potatoes when I was growing up.”
The beehive is first filled with a honey mascarpone mousse, then with candied sweet potatoes that were baked with a North Carolina smoked bourbon. Following the sweet potatoes is candied bacon—another staple snack at Brodar’s grandmother’s house. The dish is finished with spiced BBQ pecans, which represents where Brodar grew up in Lexington, N.C.—”a tiny town,” she says, “known mostly for their BBQ.”
The brown butter oat cake is drizzled with North Carolina honey and garnished with edible flowers and a tuile honeycomb cookie.
“The dessert was a major hit in the competition,” says Brodar. “I was able to represent my Granny’s legacy and win runner up for Pastry Chef of the Year for the NCRLA. … I think my dish could [serve as a] reminder to never forget where you came from, where your inspiration for cooking came from, and why you spend every day doing the challenging work that we all know and love. Being in the culinary industry is anything but easy; however, being able to keep memories alive in your dishes makes it a little easier. I hope my story can encourage others to think creatively for future desserts and know that you can do anything you put your mind to, even if it seems crazy at the time.”
