CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Stanton Ho added candy flowers to his chocolate creations in the Hilton Hawaiian Village kitchen yesterday.

Vegas chef makes
Easter a sweet bet

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By Betty Shimabukuro
betty@starbulletin.com

Getting ready for Easter, are you? Planning to color a couple dozen eggs, decorate some cookies, maybe even break out that candy-making kit and mold some chocolate bunnies?

Amateur.

Gourmet Affair Featuring: Chef Sam Choy and pastry chef Stanton Ho Dinner is served: 6 p.m. Saturday Place: Hilton Hawaiian Village Coral Ballroom Tickets: $200, to benefit Big Brothers Big Sisters Call: 521-3811

Stanton Ho has your holiday endeavors beat many times over.

The executive pastry chef from the Las Vegas Hilton is doing the desserts for Saturday's Gourmet Affair, chef Sam Choy's annual fund-raising dinner for Big Brothers Big Sisters.

This means he's at work making 52 chocolate centerpieces, most of them consisting of several chocolate eggs entwined in candy ribbons and covered in sugar flowers, with a few chocolate bunnies cavorting about as well.

All that, plus 500 desserts of white chocolate mousse filled with passion fruit cream and petits four to go with coffee.

But for Ho, who sweetens up parties for as many as 7,000 diners a couple times a month, this little event is nothing complicated.

"It's just another party," he says.

Examine Ho's credentials and you can see why he's barely breaking a sweat. In 2001 he headed the U.S. team that captured the gold medal at the World Pastry Cup in Lyon France. The competition required mastery of pastry arts from ice carving to chocolate design to making a cake out of sorbets, parfaits and ice cream. "If you're talking about a pressure cooker ..."

Ho -- a graduate of the culinary program at Kapiolani Community College -- says he trained for 10 years for that victory and has now retired from competition. "My goals have been met."

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