Gina DePalma is a pastry chef and cookbook writer who has been the pastry chef for Babbo Restaurant and Enoteca since 1998.

She says that her years at the restaurant have “been amazing. I have had the opportunity to work with the genius of Mario Batali and a succession of gifted chefs and cooks who have enriched me as a chef and a person. It’s been a gratifying and wild ride.”

Gina is the author of Dolce Italiano, Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen and contributed the dessert chapter for Mario’s book, The Babbo Cookbook.

Gina grew up in an Italian family near New York City and after graduation from college worked in kitchens and restaurants to save money for law school. She soon decided the kitchen was more enticing than the law and went to culinary school.

Gina’s became a pastry apprentice at New York’s Chanterelle restaurant and then went on to work in the pastry department of Gramercy Tavern, where she worked for Claudia Fleming. Her next job was as pastry chef for The Cub Room in Soho, after which she went to work at Babbo.

Looking back at her training, Gina says that everyone she knew, including her family, thought she “was nuts” when she decided to pursue the life of a chef.

Gina was named as Outstanding Pastry Chef by the James Beard Foundation and won the Bon Appetit Magazine Award for Best Pastry Chef. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Daily News, New York Magazine, Gourmet, Chocolatier, Food & Wine magazine, and Pastry Art and Design magazine. In 2005, Pastry Art and Design named her one of the top ten pastry chefs in America.

Gina lives in the New York metropolitan area, although she now spends a good deal of time in Italy researching her next book. Her website is http://www.ginadepalma.net/home.html