His death was confirmed by his daughter, Julie Kumin. Mr. Kumin, Swiss by birth, had been working for a decade in top Canadian hotels when Joe Baum invited him to come to New York in 1958 to work at the Four Seasons, his latest project for Restaurant Associates. For the restaurant’s signature dessert, Mr. Kumin invented chocolate velvet cake, a variation on the classic bombe — a dome of chocolate cake, glazed in chocolate, containing a mousse made with chopped-up Heath bars, amaretto and rum. Mr. Kumin was invited to take over as pastry chef at the White House in 1979 while teaching at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. “To me it is an honor,” he told The Washington Post. It’s like you are in a newsroom and everything goes click, click, click, and then you go in an office and it gets quiet.”

Source: New York Times September 13, 2016 00:07 UTC