This is the next in our series of educators featured in our Bake Twentyfive issue. Each weekday, we will spotlight a new instructor or educator in the fields of baking, pastry, and chocolate.

Lauded as a master of modern day confectionery arts, Chef Ewald Notter is popularly known as a celebrated competitor, eminent teacher and esteemed author. He has an eye for color, an appreciation for textures and a keen sense for details — in the same way fine artists use acrylics, oils or clay as their mediums.

Notter prefers to create his masterpieces by using a palette of sugar and chocolate. He is widely respected as an innovator, having introduced many firsts that have helped mold the craft and advance the industry.

Notter is the founder and director of education of Notter School of Pastry Arts in Orlando, Florida. The school was recognized as one of the world’s most prestigious pastry schools, with teaching methods based on the artist-apprentice model practiced in Europe for many centuries.

“When I had to enter apprenticeship at 15, it was important that the profession I chose involved creativity and hand skills,” Notter once said of his start. “From the very beginning, seeing people buying and enjoying pastries I had produced filled me with joy and pride. I was in the field for 10 years before I was introduced to sugar decorations, and the fascination for it was instant. Luckily, my teacher gave me the opportunity to assist him, and I had so much respect for him that I was afraid every day not to live up to his expectations.”

Notter has worked and competed in more than 15 countries, winning numerous awards including at least 15 gold medals, as well as National and World Pastry Team Champion, and Pastry Chef of the Year.  As part of the 2001 U.S. National Team in Lyon, France, he scored the highest ever recorded number of points for sugar, 699 out of 700, helping the U.S. Team achieve its first and, so far, only gold medal.

Honored by the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences with the 5 Star Diamond award as “One of the Finest Confectionery Chefs of the World,” Notter was also the first pastry professional inducted into the Pastry Art and Design Hall of Fame. Notter remains today a prominent figure in the most illustrious competitions as venerable coach and distinguished judge.

Notter has starred in four videos involving chocolate and sugar decoration for the Culinary Institute of America, which became their best-selling videos. He has published several highly notable books on his craft: classic references “The Textbook for Sugar Pulling & Sugar Blowing” and “Das ist Zucker—That’s Sugar,” as well as the 2010 book “The Art Of The Chocolatier.”