Pastry chef’s sugar sculpture sweetens the pot for O.C. Fair visitors

Orange County Fair visitors with a sweet tooth can find a lot to satisfy it on any given day. But most confections on the midway don’t require a blow torch to create.

On Sunday evening, however, award-winning pastry chef and master chocolatier Stephane Tréand wielded fire, canned air and plastic molds to forge an exotic tropical-looking sculpture out of sugar.

Tréand, a Tustin resident, owns The Pastry School and St. Patisserie Chocolat, both at 3321 Hyland Ave. in Costa Mesa.

He has a booth at the fair’s OC Promenade through Aug. 13, featuring treats such as chocolates, croissants, meringues and macaron gelato sandwiches, a first for the Orange County Fair.

Tréand also will hold a cookie decorating class for children ages 9 to 17 at 1 p.m. Aug. 6 at the fair in Costa Mesa.

“They won’t have to follow a recipe or anything; they will have total freedom to be creative,” Tréand said in a statement.

The native of Paris got his start as an apprentice at a pastry shop in northern France while taking pastry courses one week per month in Vincennes, Paris, according to a news release. He opened Patisserie Tréand in Brignoles in Provence in 1989, and a few years later became a pastry teacher at the CFA of St. Maximin.

In 2004, he won the Meilleur Ouvrier de France, an award given by the French president to a professional in a trade.

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