Holiday Recap

Me & My Siblings, Christmas Eve Eve

I'm a little late on this one, but it was an extraordinarily busy holiday season. For a restaurant, the holidays are always on the hectic side, but this one felt even more so. This was my first holiday season in charge of a pastry department, and I wanted everything to run smoothly. Like I said in my Thanksgiving post, working on the holidays isn't the best part of this job, but it's one I've gotten kind of used to over the years. This year I was fortunate to have off on Christmas Eve, my favorite holiday. As bonus excitement this year, my brother Eric got engaged to his longtime girlfriend Meghann, and we were able to celebrate with her family the day before Christmas Eve at Chef Marc's Tribeca restaurant, Marc Forgione. The meal was amazing, and we were all so overjoyed with Eric & Meghann's big news.

Eggnog Parfait

Peppermint Ice Cream Cake

Holiday Cookie Tins

For Christmas Eve & Christmas Day at American Cut, we featured a dessert menu with some special holiday desserts including a peppermint ice cream cake and an eggnog mousse parfait. For Christmas Eve at my house, I threw together a couple of desserts for my family, including a mascarpone cheesecake with a mixed berry compote and a candy bar cake. Not as impressive as the year I made 8 different desserts for the two days, but at least I came up with something.

NYE Desserts

As soon as Christmas was over, we switched into a heavy prep mode for New Year's Eve. NYE at a restaurant is one of the busiest days, and this year was no exception. A lot of people spend their NYE in Atlantic City, and the restaurant was packed for the night. That night, we ran three desserts to accommodate the pre fixe menu and other diners. Chef Marc wanted a "large chocolate cake," so I took that idea and made giant black and white ice cream cakes with chocolate cake and white espresso ice cream. We finished those off with edible silver balls and glitter. We also ran our Crackerjack Sundae, but added a significant amount of gold leaf to it for a "bling" factor. Gold leaf is a very thin sheet of real gold that you can eat. Our new vanilla bean mascarpone cheesecake also debuted that night, with a honey tangerine sorbet and mulled wine reduction. Dessert service wrapped up shortly after midnight, but we made it up to the front of the bar to watch the ball drop and toast with a glass of champagne.

Kristen & I, pre-ball drop

Now that the holidays are over, I've been able to concentrate more on developing new desserts and working on some interesting projects. Winter is a challenging time for any pastry chef, as the fruit supply dwindles to basically just citrus. Despite this, I have some new desserts coming up that I'm very excited about.