Kelsey Dwyer

Kelsey Dwyer, Oklahoma City native and Putnam City North High School graduate, has journeyed from watching The Food Network at her grandmother’s hospital bed as a child to graduating this spring from The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, New York.

Dwyer discovered a love for baking at an early age, which expanded while she attended nutritional and food science summer camps as an elementary school student, leading her as a teenager to take on the role of baker for class parties, birthdays, and family weddings. She says her first teacher at CIA, Chef Jesse Jackson III, helped turn her from a self-proclaimed “home baker” into an industry professional. Her concentration is cakes and pastries, although she initially struggled with breads. “I like to think I have made up for it,” she says, as she has since been baking bread with steady success at the on-campus shop.

After two semesters of kitchen classes, CIA students do an externship in which they must find a job. For many this is their first experience in the industry — working long hours, seeing what the job is like. After that, students know, “This is what I really want to do!” or “This is maybe not for me.” Dwyer worked 15-hour days between two restaurants in Nantucket, Massachusetts. “It was a great experience,” she remembers. “I met people from all over the world.”

For her senior capstone project, she was a member of a pastry team preparing an eight-course, escape room-themed, charity fundraising dinner. Her team created a rosemary cream cheese mousse enclosed in a crispy meringue shell with a honey cake base, and paired apricot sorbet with an apricot consommé sauce, an apple cider and ginger spherification “yolk,” and a cucumber lemon granita topped with champagne caviar, among other marvels.

Although technically graduated, Dwyer will be taking CIA’s Advanced Baking & Pastry Concentration program in Napa Valley, California, to round out her degree. She hopes to return to work somewhere on the East Coast, although a stop off back in OKC with a trip to Brown’s Bakery in Midtown is likely. “Their applesauce donuts are top-notch,” she confirms.

Dwyer’s experience at the CIA has not only strengthened her talents, but also helped her mature as a person. She attributes much of her growth to meeting and working alongside an international community. She says, “You get a little piece from every single person, and it helps you develop.”