Glaze of glory: Club at Las Campanas executive pastry chef wins national culinary prize

Sep. 18—For many, dessert is about chocolate, vanilla, maybe strawberry, a drizzle of caramel.

Club at Las Campanas executive pastry chef Rebecca Freeman has more creative ideas about the desserts she prepares throughout the day for the exclusive club's 850 members.

"There are some flavor combinations I can't get over," Freeman said, citing one combo: "Strawberry, basil, hibiscus, black pepper."

She employs those in an olive oil cake with basil ice cream and also a strawberry cremeux, a custard/mousse pastry.

"Another flavor combination I cannot get over is mission figs, fig leaf ice cream, coconut," Freeman said. "I try to bring it out every summer."

Freeman went with pumpkin pie custard, salted white chocolate ice cream, cranberry gelée, coffee caramel and candied walnuts to qualify in March for the July finals of the national Pastry Chef of the Year competition put on by the American Culinary Federation.

"I had a fresh personality and a fresh plated dessert they had not seen before," Freeman commented.

Freeman went on to win the ACF's Pastry Chef of the Year award in a field of five regional winners with a coffee-chicory milk chocolate namelaka, a creamy dessert she accentuated with roasted banana ice cream, brûléed bananas, pecan praline and chocolate sucrée. She capped her win with a layered caked with passion fruit cremeux, grenadine jelly, orange-rum white chocolate mousse and sponge cake.

She believes she won because the other competitors were culinary instructors and restaurant owners.

"I'm very much a working pastry chef," Freeman said. "I'm not a clipboard chef. The reason I won is I was able to work cleanly, finish on time, and my flavors were on point."

Club at Las Campanas executive chef Jake Judd hired Freeman in January 2019, just seven months after he, himself, took charge of the kitchen.

"She won because she is incredibly technically skilled," Judd said. "She cares about making delicious food."

Freeman had been "completely oblivious" she was on the verge of being named pastry chef of the year in New Mexico for 2022 by the New Mexico chapter of the American Culinary Federation.

"I believe in her," ACF New Mexico President Leonard Bailey said. "I believe she can go the distance. She has the skill level to work at The Broadmoor [in Colorado Springs] and The French Laundry [in Napa Valley]. You meet somebody like her once in a great while. You see a person like her very rarely."

Bailey pushed for Freeman to get the state award.

"This was my first award," Freeman said. "Leonard said, 'Just so you know, you can take this nationally.' When he put that grain of an idea in my head, I immediately dismissed it. It took me a full month to consider it."

Freeman was also in no rush to apply for the executive pastry chef job at Club at Las Campanas.

"My stepmom told me to apply," Freeman said. "I ignored her completely."

But join the club she did. She came to Judd's attention in a curious way: Judd's sister-in-law is dating Freedman's stepbrother, son of the stepmom that told her to apply for the job.

"She definitely has a super-high skill level," Judd said. "There's an attention to detail. She is always trying to refine her talent. Pastry plays a part in every meal service we have."

Freeman and two assistants make breakfast pastries, do the bread service every day, make fine dining plated desserts and also more casual desserts, and make pastries for wine dinners, themed dinners, buffets, golf events, weddings and funerals.

The menu changes frequently.

"I have always viewed pastry more as a science than an art," she said. "Cooking is more an art. Pastry is more rigid. It's a very logical thing. I like to think logically."

Measurements have to be precise in pastries, she said.

Freeman, 32, grew up in Chicago around her grandmother making handmade pasta. Her high school also had a commercial kitchen for students.

"Pastry just kind of clicked, as I remember," she said. "I have a picture I drew when I was 5. I wanted to be a chef."

She got her culinary training at Kendall College in Chicago, a culinary arts and hospitality management college.

"There were 50 pastry students, and only eight of us graduated," she said.

She worked two jobs simultaneously in Chicago that pretty much covered the spectrum of pastries. Freeman was head baker at a tiny bakery producing croissants, muffins and birthday cakes early in the day and then worked at a Michelin-starred restaurant later in the day.

"It was hell," she said. "I was working 16 hours a day. I got the whole range of pastry in one day."

Freeman's sister was a student at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. Freeman visited 10 years ago and never left, first signing on as pastry chef at Geronimo, where she stayed just under two years, and then working as pastry chef at The Compound, for just under four years.

"I was living in a high-rise in an [awful] neighborhood in Chicago," Freeman said. "It was quiet in Santa Fe. I never experienced quiet in Chicago."

Freeman doesn't intend to leave Club at Las Campanas any time soon, but she is studying to get a Master of Business Administration degree to set the table to possibly open a burger and soft-serve ice cream shop.

Despite her exceptional pastry acumen, Freeman said she doesn't dream of owning her own pastry shop.

"I don't think I love anything more than soft-serve ice cream," Freeman stated.