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(Dec. 21, 2011) - Jason Reaves says reality TV is “real,” but only up to a point.“It’s real, but they get out what they want. They don’t want you to have any inside thoughts, only outside thoughts. Anything you’re thinking, they want you to say it so they’ll know what you’re thinking.”
Reaves, who attended Loudoun Valley High School and Monroe Technology Center (MTC), recently got a taste of reality TV when he won the “LEGO Challenge” episode of the “Food Network Challenge!” The pastry chef at Market Salamander in Middleburg, Reaves and assistant Terry Tuttle created a three-and-a-half-foot-high LEGO city that could serve 400 people out of cake.
If that wasn’t hard enough, Reaves finished the show by proposing to his fiancée, Nicole Paduano on air.
Which made him more nervous; taking part in the cake competition or popping the question?
Cake competition.
“I knew she was going to say ‘Yes,’ ” said Reaves. (He and Paduano had been dating six years.) “She was dropping hints left and right before that. I was pretty positive that she was going to say ‘Yes.’…
“Even if I didn’t win, I still had the ring and I was still going to propose; just maybe not on national television.”
Reaves and Tuttle competed against three other teams on “Food Network Challenge!” The only instruction they got from the production staff was to make the cake look like “not cake.” Reaves accomplished this by creating a LEGO-like city featuring a heliport. He said the production crew tried to create rivalries between the teams but that the competition was a friendly one.
“We all pretty much got along. We met the day before when we were setting up and it was more for fun than anything else.”
Reaves, who was home-schooled until his high school years, grew up doing a lot of cooking, especially with organic foods. “When you do home-schooling, you can focus a lot more on what you like to do and I found that I like to cook a lot.” He also visited his grandmother, who lived nearby, to learn family recipes.
Cake was not Reaves specialty during his formative years. His original love was pastries. He’d bake the occasional cake for the county fair, but that was about it.
After he graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, Reaves worked at the Lansdowne Resort, a restaurant in San Francisco and for Norwegian Cruise Line in Hawaii. (He came to Market Salamander in 2005.) The cruise gig was an especially difficult one.
Working with a staff of eight to 12, Reaves helped supply pastries and desserts for 11 restaurants, 2,400 passengers and a crew of 900. The pastry chefs worked 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for five months straight. They then got four or five weeks of vacation.
Cakes became a specialty for Reaves after reality shows such as “Ace of Cakes” and “Cake Boss” led to a demand for elaborate, themed cakes. Cakes also help boost business at Market Salamander when the demand for desserts is not at its peak.
“It just took off. I didn’t realize I was any good at it,” said Reaves. He added that creating cakes also plays off his natural talents.
“I enjoy doing the cakes because it has a lot to do with art. Growing up I did a lot of art, a lot of painting; so it’s really nice to have a career that I considered…as a hobby. My career is what used to be my hobby. It’s awesome.”
Among the elaborate cakes Reaves has created are a model of Virginia Tech’s Lane Stadium (with working lights), a life-size zombie (with marshmallow intestines) and a bat with working wings. Reaves said there are three words he never utters when someone comes to him with a wild cake idea: “That’s not possible.”
“I say that to myself after I meet with them and say that I’ll do it. I agree to pretty much everything. The only time I won’t agree is if there’s not enough time to do it. If it’s too short notice, that’s the only time I say ‘No.’
“I never say no for something I think I can’t do because I’m pretty sure I can figure out how to do it…Most of the interesting cakes are like that; I go in not having a clue how it’s going to happen.”
Baking specialty cakes is a grueling business encompassing long days. Reaves starts by creating the decorations made out of sugar, which take a week to dry so that they won’t break. The cake components are baked a couple of days in advance of delivery and decoration is done the day before or on the day of delivery. “We don’t freeze anything, everything’s made fresh from scratch. It’s a little bit of a challenge.”
Another challenge is knowing your creation will be eaten shortly after it’s delivered.
“That’s one thing you have to get through. That’s what’s going to happen in the end. I’m OK with it, I guess.”
Reaves five-year goal was to get on the cake show. He hasn’t figured what the next goal is.
“We’ve been doing some really big cakes, so I don’t know if there’s something out there that I’m hoping to get.”
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