Sugar Daddy
Sugar Daddy Dana Herbert lives in sugar and butter. The UD grad and Bear resident puts in 50 hours a week as pastry chef at the Philadelphia Downtown Marriott. The rest of his time is devoted to his Desserts by Dana bakeshop in Bear, where he crafts wedding cakes and mini-cheesecakes alongside his visually stunning sugar sculptures. Herbert creates the showpieces for weddings and private events. While attending culinary school in Rhode Island, Herbert was drawn into the specialized world of pastry arts, where gum paste, pastillage and PVC tubing are part of the accoutrement. “I found myself doing all the artsy stuff that a lot of people didn’t want to touch,” Herbert says. “Something kept calling me to the pastry side.” Sugar sculptures can be more delicate than single-pane glass, so it’s taken years for Herbert to master the complicated relationship between sugar and temperature. An average showpiece takes eight painstaking hours to complete. Herbert made a 6-foot sugar flower arrangement last year for the Philadelphia Flower Show, a Philly sports-themed piece for ESPN, sculptures for the Paris Gourmet and Cacao Noel Pastry Exhibition, and one pretty sharp Delaware-themed masterpiece. —Matt Amis