JOY FRIENDS
Susan G. Purdy
Susan G. Purdy is the prize-winning author and illustrator of the unique high altitude baking book, Pie in the Sky. An authority on high altitude baking, Purdy perfected her recipes during a five-year period of intense research while living, and baking, on mountaintops from North Carolina to Colorado.
Purdy won the IACP/Julia Child Cookbook Award for her groundbreaking work in Have Your Cake & Eat It, Too. Her next book, Let Them Eat Cake, was nominated for a James Beard Award. Altogether, she is the author of thirty books, twelve in the field of pastry and baking, including: The Perfect Cake, The Perfect Pie, The Family Baker, A Piece of Cake, and As Easy As Pie. Among Purdy's other works are a series of five children's holiday cookbooks and sixteen children's craft and how-to books, which she also designed and illustrated. She is familiar to many who have seen her frequent national television appearances, which include segments on NBC-Today Show, CBS Morning Show, ABC Good Morning America, The Food Network, and QVC. Purdy has been a national spokesperson for Knox Gelatin, General Mills Gold Medal Softasilk Cake Flour, and Colombo Yogurt.
Purdy conducts pastry-baking workshops across the United States and in France, is a food consultant, and teaches recipe-writing and culinary journalism in the Professional Chefs Program at the Cambridge Massachusetts School of Culinary Arts. Because of her work with diet and health, she has developed special culinary programs for Philadelphia's Hahnemann Hospital, Cleveland's University Hospital Synergy Culinary Program, and St. Vincent-Carmel Hospital in Carmel, Indiana. In addition, she writes about food and travel for national magazines such as Fine Cooking, Cooks Illustrated, Eating Well, Spa Magazine, Cooking Pleasures Magazine, and Family Fun. For four years she wrote a syndicated food column for Gannett Newspapers.
Purdy studied at Vassar College, New York University, and l'École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Her culinary education included courses of study at both the Cordon Bleu and l'École de Cuisine La Varenne in France, and the International Pastry Arts Center in New York. She lives in Litchfield County, Connecticut.