Can you take the heat?

Amanda Leikvold stands behind her desk and addresses her culinary arts students at Auburn High School. "Today, we're going to make gingerbread cookies and apple cider," she says.

All 20 students are decked out in white chef hats, chef jackets and aprons. They are attentive and smiling. They look eager and interested, ready to get into the meat of the cooking process.

The students begin stirring around like ants, bringing recipe ingredients to workstations. This is a hands-on work-in-progress class. To the students, this is serious stuff.

There is sugar, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, baking soda, melted margarine, milk, molasses, syrup, vanilla, lemon extract and flour. Students are measuring and mixing and stirring and rolling out brown-colored dough with wooden rolling pens.

Like a mother hen taking care of her brood of chicks, Leikvold meanders around the workstations, observing, answering questions, making suggestions and offering encouragement.

Various shapes and sizes of cookie cutters are used to cut the rolled-out dough. There are stars, leaves, squares, circles and trees. One group makes a gingerbread man; the right arm breaks from the body and sticks to the cookie cutter. Two students bend over laughing and slap the sides of their legs.

Another student removes the arm and gingerly rejoins it to the body, smoothing the broken joint with her right index finger. The cutouts are placed on a lightly greased cookie sheet and put into a preheated oven at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.

It's not long before the smells of ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon float through the classroom. Smiles appear. The students are happy with their end product, though the shape and size of some cookies would not do well in a cookie-cooking contest. The odd shapes do not prevent the cookies from being gobbled up. So goes Leikvold's class.

When asked why he was taking the class, L. J. Grady, a senior, grinned and said, "I like the experience, and I like to cook and eat the fried chicken."

Reid Dowdy, a junior, enthusiastically said that the class "is one of the greatest classes at AHS, man, its fun." Reid's favorite food to cook is egg rolls.

Lizzie McGowan "likes cooking and eating, its fun learning different ways to cook." Jesus Gomez "likes cooking and wants to become a chef."

Erin Beasley says she knows nothing about cooking and "wants to learn before going to college" Several more students were interviewed; all were passionate about the culinary program.

The culinary arts program at AHS is on the cutting edge of creating career paths for students enrolled in the Culinary Arts and Hospitality curriculum. According to Leikvold, the program's director, students are exposed to an in-depth look at what it's like to work in the foodservice industry.

They explore skills and techniques used in the culinary field as well as basic life skills that are necessary to operate safely and effectively in the kitchen.

Leikvold said the curriculum is fast-paced and professional. Standards are established by the Alabama State Course of Study and information covered ranges from safety in the kitchen to producing tasteful, appetizing food in large quantities.

Leikvold has a degree in nutrition and food science from Auburn University and she also attended the Educator Training Program at Johnson and Wales University Culinary School in Charleston, S.C.

"When the home economics teacher retired, the decision were made to update our old home economics curriculum to a Culinary Arts and Hospitality program," said AHS principal Cathy Long. "Representatives from the board of education, the central office, the business community and AHS made several site visits to area culinary facilities. These trips were instrumental in determining the need for the culinary program."

Plans to update the old human science lab to current building codes suitable for the culinary arts lab were found to be cost prohibitive so were put on hold. The decision was made, however, to continue the development of the program, utilizing the human science lab on a limited basis, as permitted without any code violations.

Then, in 2007, the Alabama Legislature passed a bond referendum creating funds to be used specifically for physical construction of educational facilities, based on student population size. Auburn City Schools received $4.3 million.

This funding, plus local funds, was used to remodel and expand the former cafeteria, which was inadequate to meet the demand of AHS' rapidly growing student body.

Since the cafeteria and culinary arts physical facility requirements were similar, the decision was made to build a state-of-the-arts Culinary and Hospitality facility under the same roof, with an expected completion date of October 2009.

When complete, the facility will be one huge room with a classroom cubicle, a dining area and five lab stations equipped for four students each. The total projected cost is around $1.8 million, plus a $200,000 grant for kitchen equipment, according to an AHS official.

Long said the culinary program has opened a lot of doors that the home economic program did not, since some of the kids will not have the opportunity to go on to college. Culinary training offers student skills that will be helpful in landing a job in the culinary field.

The program has been well received by the student body. Last semester more than 300 students registered for the 120 spaces available, making the class one of the school's most popular electives.

"The students get to eat what they cook. and high school students like to eat," Long said.