July 26, 2004

White House Chef Escapes Broccoli Chocolate Cake

Twenty-Five Year Pastry Veteran Retires Just in Time

On Friday, Roland Mesnier will retire as White House pastry chef, ending a 25-year career. And George and Laura Bush are in Texas all week, lying low at the Crawford ranch during the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Thus, it seems almost a certainty that Mesnier will have survived Bush 43 without ever having to bake Laura Bush's broccoli chocolate cake with broccoli chocolate icing.

Mesnier declined to be interviewed about the Bush recipe that incorporates the family's favorite vegetable into a killer chocolate cake. But the French-born chef has quietly let some of his friends know that he thinks one of his most satisfying accomplishments as White House pastry chef was dodging Laura Bush's demands that he bake the cake during the 42 months since Bush took office.

Rosalynn Carter hired Mesnier in 1979, and he was retained by Presidents Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43. He created favorite family desserts for all five presidents, but drew the line at incorporating Broccoli into a cake and its icing.

"Roland's an agreeable kind of guy who likes to give people pleasure through his creations and over the years he's been a good sport and tackled some rather awful family dessert recipes," said a friend of Mesnier's who is familiar with Mesnier's thoughts on the matter.

"But the idea of broccoli in a cake is very repugnant to him. He felt very strongly that he had to finally draw a line somewhere. He knew he had to take a stand about broccoli if he was to retain his self-esteem," the friend said. "Also, he has to think about how his colleagues will regard him in retirement and what his biographers will say. So those things were factors, too."

Mesnier had some close calls as he artfully dodged the First Lady and her desire to satisfy the President's craving for the broccoli cake. Though Mrs. Bush handed him the recipe during her first week in the White House and suggested that Mesnier "bake one of these every week or two" he managed to put off the cake as the demands of a new administration settling in pushed other desserts to the fore.

Then came 9/11 and its difficult aftermath and more urgent pastry creations constantly intervened.

A really close call came in mid-2003 when a slack period in the White House social calendar provided Mrs. Bush with an opening to renew the request for the cake. Mesnier was on the verge of sending an assistant out for broccoli when a foreign dignitary who had canceled a visit decided to come to Washington after all.

The chef begged off on broccoli cake because of the foreign visitor. Not long after that, it was time to start getting ready to pass the baton and retire.

Click here to read the other presidents' favorite family dessert recipes that Mesnier did prepare.

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