the chef John Dini has been named one of the 10 most influential pastry chefs in America by Forbes and also the best new pastry chef by New York magazine so that's a pretty heady stuff right there all right so what are they what are they eating there chef not enough to hold the new book that's coming out sugar rush it's all about going back to basics you know so many generations have passed now that people aren't growing up baking with their families you know I didn't learn how to bake from my mother and my grandmother they've all worked so this new book is all about really going about the fund that fundamentals talking about what is a meringue how many different types of meringue are they what how do you make them and what do you use them for so this book is all about that so this is a nice light summery dessert a Chris morena peanut colada pastry cream some caramelized pineapple and you know so all the flavors of the summer in my mind early sort of a summer vacation I just heard in my ear you know it's really quiet in the counter and now I understand why it's because you guys have never tasted anything like this oh my Wow they're all classic flavor profiles and combinations just a matter if I'd like to kind of play what play with things and change textures a little bit I like instead of just using raw pineapple I like to really caramelize that's what I need you for I'm gonna do that sorry that marking that's that's right you were I've never had anything like this from the way it was named one of the best chefs ever and okay so I'm gonna start you out okay what are your pineapple into our hot military middle it's like a grill pan yeah so you can keep going with that all right meanwhile I'm gonna start making the pastry cream okay essentially the pastry cream is coconut milk and pineapple juice now not me just this the unsweetened cream okay great so while that's heating up I have an egg some egg yolk there's an amazing backstage chef here named Haley oh my gosh she's a military for Haley where she yeah and she she whipped up our meringues for us ahead of time obviously that's something you want to do ahead of time we use a French meringue which means everything goes into the mixer in the beginning versus a Swiss meringue or a time rank so you kind of mount it up little by little how we're doing over there chef I'm looking I think they need a couple of arts yeah so in my pocket my pan here are the egg egg yolk salt almost everything I do in the pastry kitchen has salt in it and not necessarily to make something salty but without the salt you would taste a difference you know it kind of it's a flavor enhancer so cornstarch and sugar and salt ball go in here together now is it because baking is is really more of math right there is with this as well like you've got to have the exact number and yeah that's funny you bring that up because I'm a huge advocate of I hate measuring cups and measuring spoons like need to do that for baking no no everything I do is to the gram I said in the books in the books we we do offer both measuring cups and spoons and by weight in all our professional kitchens we were huge advocates of really working to weight if I were to I is that if I was to give everybody here a measuring cup and say give me a cup of flour and I measured every one of your cups of flowers it'll be a different ingredients imagine you guys you have a recipe now with seven different ingredients so about seven quantities that are gonna be different across the board there's no way you'll be consistent product that every time you make it so and if you weigh it you weigh your taking out one less variable that could go wrong in the baking kitchen and this yeah I use one of the great yeah Wow to it pastry because I took a course in case not like him but I took a course and they told us when you're measuring the flour to take it and put it in the cup in two and two not to dip your cup in exactly to my chief you're gonna use a cup always scoops with one container into another and then level off right never compact never delays on is what we did have we cued our liquid and we combined our dry with our eggs and we temper the hot liquid into the eggs and then back in that way we prevent it from curling us now let me ask you something I mean your parents you said you did this at home this isn't your typical like I'm gonna bake a cake and baked cupcakes and put frosting on it you had to really put a lot of thought into these different recipes that way I started out as a pop washer because I come from a family group upstate New York that uh essentially we didn't get allowances there's a bunch of a bunch of troublesome kids almost brothers so they said they try to get us like we're not give you allowance to go get in more trouble you go get a job so I started off in the pot washer work my way up to dishwasher the corner does high school I went to offered culinary classes I started taking him I started competing at an early age and then it went from there I love house there's something below dishwasher what happened you bring that up to a boil come to a full boil we'll whisk in some butter and Malibu you always want to add that at the end now why do you add the butter at the end okay all right refrigerator do you have everything all right all right so our pastry cream would go in there always when you make a custard you want to put plastic wrap directly on the surface to prevent the skin from forming but here like I don't I don't like skiing out of pudding it drives me crazy so that's the way to do it anyway I can just acknowledge how it goes oh yeah that's right you know what I was like what all right so we have the meringue here now what are you so this is this is the pastry cream that's been lightened with uh with just whipped cream these are you want to always do the pineapple again and advance a little bit just to let them cool so don't melt your cream go around in a circle if the pineapple almost has like a creme brulee topping to it yeah you're finalizing the natural sugars in the in a pen yeah I'm not normally thriving to be one of those people who like stands at the department the the mall and passes out samples of food to people on its stick yeah I would do that with this and we do not taste summer vacation your mouth it really is you have that this is remarkable like the Caribbean is this something mark can make it home there's no way it's super easy so the way we're gonna finish this I just reserved a little bit of the regular pastry cream at the end okay and I'm just gonna kind of spread this around so beautiful oh and that's just gonna act like a kind of a little bit of a glue how do you cut that stuff it's like yeah anyway you just take a serrated knife I'll cam enough carefully with a serrated knife you want to go through the other mine mmm that's so this is something that's great for the summer you know it's a play off of Australian pavlova light airy crispy for me every time I think about a dessert yeah I want something that's crispy something creamy something acidic something sweet something sour so think about all the flavors we have in there you know we have the finalized flavors every part gob yeah immediately