Stewart is the chef and innkeeper of the Gallery House Bed and Breakfast and Art Gallery in Louisville.  She recently graduated summa cum laude from the National Center for Hospitality studies of Sullivan University with a degree in baking and pastry arts.  

She spends hours working with sugar, fondant, buttercream and pastillage making a hat box that is really a cake or a Derby Hat cake with handmade red roses.  Breakfast at the Gallery House is a delightful experience for the guests.  Stewart serves blueberry buckle, Southwest eggs and raisin bread French toast.  “I always had the ability to ‘taste in my head,’” Stewart said.  “I can read a recipe and I will know immediately what it will taste like, what might need to be changed, or how the addition of a different spice or ingredient will affect the taste of the final dish.  It saves a lot of experimentation.  This is how I created the Southwest eggs recipe.” 

French toast is a specialty at the Gallery House.  Stewart creates a lemon-stuffed French toast shaped like a butterfly.  Sometimes she will make French toast with caramel and bananas or caramel and apples or a cherry version with eggnog sauce around the holidays.

Three of Stewart’s cake creations have been on display in the Sullivan University Collection—a white chocolate ladies’ hat decorated with handmade dark chocolate roses, gentleman’s top hat, and an art-deco inspired pastillage vase filled with a bouquet of handmade chocolate flowers.

 --Vivian Perez