Simply beautiful. A sugar craft creation done by Nicholas Douglas, pastry chef at Oven Delight in Kingston.

Keisha Shakespeare-Blackmore, Staff Reporter

While at Girl's Town, Nicholas entered the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission Culinary competition. He won a gold medal for a jam; silver for a wedding cake, bronze for a dessert, and a merit award for a pudding. By July 2003, he entered a wedding cake competition and won a silver medal. He also received a scholarship to attend the Western Hospitality Institute in Montego Bay.

In November, he competed in Skill Jamaica, a programme organised by HEART Trust/National Training Agency. The programme recruits Jamaicans to represent the island overseas in the international leg of the competition. That year, the competition took place in Helsinki, Finland. After a seven-hour competition, Douglas came out victorious to represent Jamaica in Helsinki. "Though I won, I did not get to go for reasons beyond my control," he recalled sadly.

Studying in Italy

In January 2004, Douglas attended Western Hospitality Institute to do an associate degree in culinary chef management. A year later, he received a scholarship through the school sponsored by the European Union to study in Italy. "I went to Apicius, the Culinary Institute of Florence, where I did Italian cuisine and wine appreciation. I also studied Italian at Linguaviva School of Italian Language. It was a great experience for me."

After graduating last year, he taught pastry arts at the institution for eight months before he resigned. His motivator, the late Hans Schenk, founder of the Chaine des Rotisseur (Jamaica leg), was assisting him to open his own pastry shop but unfortunately died before they had a chance to fulfill Douglas' dream. "After his death, I just scrapped it, but I know one day I will open a pastry shop."

As a young boy, Douglas dreamed of becoming a chef. "From I was eight years old, I knew I was going to be a chef. When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, I told them 'a world class chef' though I did not know what that meant."

Love and passion for cooking

Nicholas Douglas is like the Albert Einstein of baking. - Photos by Ian Allen/Staff Photographer

He added that he has a love and passion for cooking. In fact, he usually helped his mother, Etta-May Taffe, in the kitchen. As he recalled, his first baking experience was when he was nine years old. "It was supposed to be a fruitcake but it had no fruits; no one in my family wanted to eat it. I threw it away."

Since then, Douglas has mastered the art of baking and has found a niche in sugar craft, a technique he learned at Girl's Town. Currently, he is working with Marva Thompson, a former tutor at Girl's Town, at Oven Delight in Kingston. Come September, he goes to University of New York to do an undergraduate degree. He is also aiming to do a post-graduate degree in France in the hope of becoming the first Jamaican master pastry chef. To that end, he is currently studying French at the Language Training Centre in Kingston.

When Douglas left Swallowfield Primary and Junior High School in Kingston, he was considered a slow learner and did not attend high school. Instead,in 2000 he attended adult literacy school. There, his true potential shone, he completed two of the three levels required for graduation (levels oneand three). Since then, the 21-year-old pastry chef has made many stridesin the world of food. In September 2002, he went to Girl's Town where he studied food preparation. Nicholas Douglas was deemed a slow learner,but around the oven he is like the Albert Einstein of baking.