I've discovered some incredibly delicious pastry recipes from some of the leading pastry chefs working all over the world. But there is one person I turn to again and again for ideas and for inspiration.

That person is Emily Luchetti.

Back in the summer of 1988, during my first trip to California, my husband Steve and I had the good fortune to dine at Jeremiah Tower’s “Stars” restaurant in San Francisco.  Being a home baker and lover of desserts made from scratch, I remember being impressed by the dessert menu that evening.

Four years later, on a return trip to the Bay Area, we revisited" Stars." That evening I learned that the pastry chef was a woman named Emily Luchetti whose incredible desserts we had discovered on our first visit. Emily had just published her first cookbook, Stars Desserts, and although I didn’t meet her that night, I did manage to purchase an autographed copy of her book.

From that moment on Emily was my “go to” source for great desserts. Over the years I acquired each new book to come out of her kitchen: Four Star Desserts, A Passion for Desserts and A Passion for Ice Cream. Her latest book, Classic Stars Desserts is a compilation of her first two books, both now out of print. Not once was I disappointed with her recipes or the results. I can’t begin to count the number of times over the years when the words “that's an Em recipe” came tumbling out of my mouth when someone complimented me on one of my desserts.

But more than the desserts themselves were the ideas that lay beneath each tasty morsel: she became the very source of ideas, a springboard by which I passionately launched myself into becoming a pastry chef.

In the spring of 2009, while working as the pastry chef at Gracie’s in Providence, I learned that Emily was doing a book signing in nearby Dartmouth, Massachusetts. At last I came face-to-face with this incredibly talented and down-to-earth woman who had served as my source of inspiration for so many years. To top it off, not long afterward she dined at Gracie’s.

My God, how far had I come?!

Emily was and remains today my singular source for inspiration: not just in ideas for producing desserts but as a confirmation of how truly important it is to produce plainly good and delicious food from scratch.