apprentices from all the other French regions for Best Apprentice in France Six months before that I’d won the Best Apprentice of Alsace, which was quite an accomplishment for a seventeen-year-old Competing at such a high level at that age was overwhelming, but I was well prepared for the competition and accomplished all of the tasks required We had to make various pastries and baked items, as well as a three-foot-tall sugar sculpture I got my hopes up because the judges kept coming back to my worktable to taste my almond cream They thought it was delicious and even asked me for the recipe It’s the optional hint of rum in the recipe that really brings out the almond flavor But I didn’t win; I came in second The pastry apprentice who won first place eventually became Best Apprentice of France His work was definitely better than mine, but at that moment it was very difficult for me to swallow being second best, which in my mind might as well have been the worst place in a competition I was so enraged that on the way out I carried my towering sugar sculpture to the car and slammed it into a garbage can Looking back now, I can see that second place was a tremendous achievement for a boy who had only been working in pastry for two years But you could never have convinced me of that then ... almond cream They thought it was delicious and even asked me for the recipe It’s the optional hint of rum in the recipe that really brings out the almond flavor But I didn’t win; I came in second The pastry. ..competition and accomplished all of the tasks required We had to make various pastries and baked items, as well as a three-foot-tall sugar sculpture I got my hopes up because the judges kept coming back to my... place was a tremendous achievement for a boy who had only been working in pastry for two years But you could never have convinced me of that then