Happy Birthday, Kristen!

My sous chef, Kristen, loves her birthday more than any person I've ever met. I quickly learned this last July after realizing that her birthday celebration went on for several weeks. We now jokingly (or not so jokingly...) say that she celebrates her birthday month.

Birthday Gifts: She's also a cat lady

Kristen also hates cake,  loves ice cream cake, and I happen to love making ice cream cakes. I first started making them when I was a cook at Maialino and was tasked with the job of making one of our favorite cook's going-away cake. The hardest part was figuring out what that Cool Whip-like frosting was, but once I cracked that mystery, it was no time before I was frosting the cake in the meat freezer, sprinkles flying everywhere, all over Lady Gaga's food (that's a story for another day).

Last year for her birthday, I quickly threw together an octopus ice cream cake, but this year I had time to plan. Because Kristen loves owls, I decided to make an owl-shaped cake. You need to work very quickly when it comes to ice cream cake (especially in the month of July!) and my decorating options were kind of limited. On top of that, a major project popped up this week (more on that in the future) and I had limited spare time. She had made me an amazing Wall-E cake for my birthday this year, so I made sure to make the time to get her cake completed...especially since she had been dropping hints to everyone that she wanted a cake for weeks prior.

I stashed the cake in the far depths of the walk-in freezer, hoping that she wouldn't snoop. Saturday was finally the big day, and we gave her the cake during our pre-shift meal. I wouldn't say she was surprised (...Kristen, were you snooping?), but she was definitely really happy. Cutting the monster was a challenge. The cake was 4 inches tall and a solid ice cream brick. We have a huge staff, and it was a huge cake!

After a long night at work, pickleback shots

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Summer Menu Changes!

Blondie with fresh berries we ran as a special

I always proclaim that I prefer fall baking to summer baking. It's not that I don't like summer's bounty of fruit, per se, but to me, better baking occurs when that's stripped. With fruit, you don't want to get in the way of the fruit. Good fruit can be a dessert in and of itself (although I'm having a hard time convincing myself of that right now...stuck in my apartment with no chocolate and only grapes) and you need to be delicate to not mask or overpower the fruit.

Original strawberry dessert

Sometimes I start out with what I think is a good idea, to only realize it is in fact not a great idea, and go on to formulate an even better one. This was the case with my strawberry dessert for this season. Chef Marc was down and we had been playing around with fried doughs. I initially had the thought to do a play on a strawberry shortcake, made with a zeppole and served with a basil gel and olive oil ice cream. I made all the components, and well, wasn't really excited by it. I've historically been opposed to fried desserts at a restaurant. It's partially because I think frying is a cop-out (who doesn't love anything fried) and partially because the bad memories I have from when I was a cook in a small, enclosed pastry kitchen that had a table top fryer. I'd leave every night reeking of fryer oil (perhaps why I had no luck meeting guys...) and vowing never to do that to my cooks once I was a chef. Additionally, I felt like this dessert was just too heavy. The thing about being a pastry chef at a steakhouse is you need to be prepared to follow up a 40 oz Tomahawk ribeye. With three potato side dishes. Most people who visit American Cut do not adhere to the warning to save room for dessert. With that in mind, I try to keep my desserts on the lighter side (not all of them, but most of them) and a fried piece of bread dough with an oil-based ice cream just didn't fit the bill.

Strawberry Ice Cream Cake

Back to the drawing board, I almost immediately thought of doing a strawberry and olive oil ice cream cake. I am obsessed with frozen desserts. Probably unhealthily so. I love the textures and temperature differences they add to a dessert. As a kid, the only birthday cake I ever wanted was an ice cream cake from Carvel, with those giant gel-blob balloons on it. I set out to make a lighter, grown-up version of the cake I loved so much as a child. I used strawberry and olive oil semifreddos (Italian for semi-frozen, essentially a frozen mousse) to give the cake a lighter feel. I guess that makes the term "ice cream cake" a misnomer, but it's easier for guests to visualize that than "semifreddo cake." I added layers of basil-soaked sponge cake and homemade Nilla wafers mixed with dehydrated strawberries. This gets molded into a giant cake and sliced for individual portions. Completed, it's 9 layers of semifreddos, cookie crumbs, and cake served with strawberries tossed with a little sugar, basil and mint and garnished with tiny mint and vanilla meringues. It is quite possibly one of my favorite desserts I've ever made. As I was cutting the cake Saturday night, I felt compelled to eat every piece of scrap. Maybe not the best decision I've made for my body all week, but delicious.

When I came up with my mascarpone cheesecake recipe back in the winter, it took somewhere between 25 and 30 attempts to perfect it. It was only supposed to be on for that season, but then Chef Marc declared it the best cheesecake he ever had, and it hasn't budged from the menu since. The components change seasonally, with its current iteration being cherry. Initially, I wanted to do sour cherries, but they proved to be impossible to find in South Jersey, so I went with sweet, dark cherries. It seemed natural to have the crust be a chocolate graham and to pair it with a cherry sorbet, made with fresh puree. Our corporate chef, Chris, had seen this idea to make a chocolate sauce out of equal parts sugar, cocoa, and water, making it like a light caramel and then deglazing with the cocoa and water. It tastes exactly like a liquid Oreo. The dish, overall, is super sexy with the contrast of colors: a deep blood red gelee on top of the pale cheesecake.

Almond Poundcake

I also worked on an almond poundcake with a stone fruit compote (I used peaches and nectarines) paired with a bourbon sweet tea ice cream that I think will appear later in the summer. These three desserts really made me rethink my stance on summer fruit desserts and got me excited about the possibilities. Now I think the problem is there are so many fruits available in such a limited amount of time and only 7 desserts on my menu!

Current pastry menu at American Cut

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Cronut Mania

Anyone who follows the food scene in NYC knows that in the past couple weeks the city has been gripped by a fever for...cronuts. Wait, what? Cronuts? At first mention, this does not sound like an appetizing, delicate pastry...much less something for which I would wait in line at 8 am. Nothing to me is worth being up before 11 am. Very few things are worth being up before noon.

Basically, a cronut is croissant dough fried in the shape of a doughnut. While Dominique Ansel has put the "cronut" on the map and internationally trademarked it, I first came across the idea on Francisco Migoya's amazing pastry blog, The Quenelle. It had been on my "to-bake" list for a while, and then cronut mania pushed it to the top.

Because, like I said, I will not get up before 8 am for anything, it was easier for me to make these than to wait on line for them. Croissant dough is a yeast-risen laminated dough, and if you've never had a traditional fresh-baked croissant, you are missing out. These were a revelation to me during my time at The French Culinary Institute. Growing up, I was familiar with both American and traditional Italian-American baking, but the closest thing I had ever had to a real croissant was the Costco variety (sad, I know). I hadn't made croissant dough since I graduated from culinary school. They don't make frequent appearances on restaurant dessert menus, and the dough is rather tedious and time consuming to make. The skill proved to be like riding a bike though, and my croissant dough came out beautifully. When it was finished, I rolled it out and cut doughnut shapes.

First thing on Friday, I set about to fry the cronuts. My AM production cook had pulled them from the refrigerator when he got in, so they were proofed and ready to go. I was surprised at how quickly they fried, just a couple minutes. I glazed them with wild strawberry and passion fruit glazes and let them cool. Within an hour, all 30 "doughssants," as we were calling them (not looking for a trademark infringement lawsuit from Dominique Ansel!), were gone. My verdict? Definitely delicious, but probably not worth waiting in a 30 minute line to pay $5 each. I feel like my coworkers are going to be haunting me, however, to make doughssants for every family meal from now on. They might be more convincing though if they form a line, $5 in hand!

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Photos & Stories from Macy's DeGustibus Event

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in a cooking demo at the Macy's De Gustibus school with Chef Marc. Because he's pretty much a "celebrity" chef, Marc gets invited to do a lot of various events, appearances, and classes. The event was an American Cut preview event because....we're opening an American Cut in NYC!!! This is GIANT news that I could not be more excited to share, especially since I will be moving back to be the pastry chef! More about that later!

Paramount Hotel

I got up to NYC the day before the event and checked in at The Paramount Hotel, a hotel owned by American Cut's parent company, LDV. Beautiful hotel, wish I could have spent more time there, but we were super busy with prepping for the next day. I headed downtown to Chef's restaurant, Marc Forgione, to begin preparing for the De Gustibus event. We did 5 courses in total, with dessert being the last. For dessert, we made my mascarpone cheesecake with a tangerine gelee. This cheesecake has been on the menu at Cut in various forms since the winter; currently it's paired weth a rhubarb Campari gelee and rhubarb fennel sorbet.

Here's the deal about the Forge kitchen... It is really tiny. And not so well-equipped. With low ceilings, a lot of humidity, and a walk-in refrigerator that feels like a cave. It's really incredible how they manage to turn out consistently incredible food with the resources they have. Kudos to the staff who works there on a daily basis. They managed to clear off a good amount of space for me, so my prep was no problem...Until I had to bake the cheesecakes in what appeared to be a large toaster oven. Unaccustomed to the way that oven worked, my cheesecakes swelled, and I had to perform some "surgery" on them the next day to give me enough room to put the gelee on top. A small problem that cost me at least an hour of sleep because I like to over stress about everything.

Showing how to mix the cheesecake

Mascarpone Cheesecake

Chef Marc in action

Wednesday was the day of the event and we met at Forge to do some last minute preparations and pack up to drive over to Macy's Herald Square. When we finally beat the traffic and got there, Chef Marc attempted to give me the keys to his brand new SUV to park it. Here's all you need to know about my driving skills: They are not good. I quickly handed them off to our chef de cuisine, Quincy, and assumed navigation responsibilities.

When we got in the DeGustibus kitchen, our hosts Sal (the owner/director of De Gustibus) and Emeril (the kitchen's lead chef) could not have been nicer or more accommodating. I'd seriously like to go back every week just to hang out with them. We unloaded all of our mise en place and got ready for guests to arrive. The first four courses were a blur with Chef showing the attendees how to prepare some of Cut's signature dishes: everything bagel gourgeres, shrimp cocktail, the OG caesar salad, and Tomahawk/chili lobster surf & turf. Before I knew it, it was time for me to hit the stage to assist Chef Marc with the dessert course. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. I'm used to being behind the scenes making the desserts, not on stage in front of an audience.

Fire power, unmolding cheesecakes

As soon as the lady in the front row yelled out "You're so pretty!" (did I mention there were wine pairings with each of the courses...?), I felt calmer, and Sal, Chef, and myself began to converse about the desserts at American Cut, our process, and the cheesecake we were preparing (which the audience got to eat while we were demoing). We told the story of how it took over 20 attempts to perfect the recipe.


Overall, the event was a big success. I personally had so much fun, and I hope that I get to do another event at De Gustibus in the future. So onto my bigger news... I will be moving back to NYC in a couple of months to open our second location of American Cut! The restaurant will be located on Greenwich St. in Tribeca (only a block away from where I got my restaurant start at Locanda Verde!) and will be opening sometime in late summer. As much as I've enjoyed my time in Atlantic City, I am anxious to get back to NYC which feels like "home." I have a couple more months though to soak up all the UV rays I can.

Group Shot

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Menu Process: Revisions, Revisions, Revisions

I'm a total perfectionist. I think to be a pastry chef, you have to be extremely type A. There are so many painstaking aspects of this job. Hours of spreading tuiles (those delicate cookies used as garnish), measuring and cutting cakes with no slice deviating in size from the rest, delicately forming sugar flowers to decorate cakes with. When I set out to develop my new menu for the restaurant, the process was especially intense.

Assembling the tarts

I had presented my menu tasting, but only had a week to put that together. In the weekend following the tasting, I worked pretty relentlessly with our corporate chef, Chris, to perfect three of the desserts to ready them for the menu. All were close, but needed slight tweaking on plating and garnishes to make them better. We did this in addition to a busy weekend of dinner service, and at the end of it, I was exhausted, but it was well-worth it seeing how much they improved. I wish I had before and after pictures, but when I was in NYC doing the tasting it was too frantic to take pictures.

Apple Tart

The first of the three is a caramel apple tart. To do something that simple, each component needs to be perfect. I paired the tart with a cider caramel, cinnamon ice cream, and a candy apple chip. The chip is particularly interesting to me. It started out as a candied apple peel and evolved to this chip. To make it, I cook the apple slices in a candy apple simple syrup, partially dehydrate them, and then flash fry them. The resulting chip is crunchy, sweet, and apple-y.

Trying the cheesecake with different sauces

The second is a pumpkin spice cheesecake. It's definitely that time of year when everyone wants to eat and drink pumpkin everything. The cheesecake is enrobed in a gingersnap shell and served with a toasted marshmallow sauce and creme fraiche sorbet.

AC Car Bomb

The last has proven to be the restaurant's most popular of the new ones, the AC Car Bomb (dessert name courtesy of Chef Marc). It's a chocolate bread pudding (made with chocolate brioche we make in-house) with Guinness ice cream, a banana Jameson butterscotch and bruleed bananas. Chef Marc is known for his banana Jameson, Jameson whiskey that is mixed with sliced bananas, set aside to macerate for a period of time, strained and then served. The resulting whiskey is not overtly banana-ish, but the bananas filter the rough edges of the Jameson and give it a smooth feel. I'm not big on brown liquors, and I even like to drink the banana Jameson straight. What I love about the Car Bomb dessert is how nicely all the flavors play off each other. Each component is good on its own, but together they're even better. The sauce comes in a shot glass and is poured table side.

Cracker Jack Sundae

Tonight we debuted a fourth new dessert to the menu, a Cracker Jack Sundae. It's popcorn ice cream (we make all our ice cream in house as well), caramel sauce, caramel popcorn, peanut brittle and vanilla bean whipped cream. I like being able to play around with traditional "American" sweets and presenting them in a new or different way that people aren't expecting. The popcorn ice cream is definitely a surprise to most people. It's a flavor you've had many times before, but in a different form.

There's just one more dessert that needs to be worked on before it hits the menu, a candy bar cake. Then I have some specials I'm working on, holiday menu items, and some holiday-related projects.

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This Week in Pictures

The past two posts didn't have any pictures so I figured this post would be all photos from the past week. This week was jam-packed.

Giant Carrots

Caramel Popcorn

My workstation, a big mess

Baby Shower Cake

Not breakfast, just ingredients for new recipes

So many new ice cream recipes

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A Pastry Career Lowlight

So, this is going to be another post without pictures of things you can eat. I really apologize about that. But it's an important story (okay, maybe only to me), and I think a little enlightening to what life is like in a kitchen.

There's two components to working in pastry at a restaurant: production and service. Production is the actual baking, and generally the more fun part, while service is the actual plating of the desserts when customers order them. Any pastry chef who says working service doesn't suck sometimes is lying to you. It can be fun and a big adrenaline rush, but mostly it's taking you away from what you'd rather be doing, the actual baking and creating.

Lately I've been working weeknight services by myself, and I've prided myself on setting up the station for a smooth service and having easy, stress-free nights. Last night was slower for pastry at the restaurant, and I mistakenly thought tonight was going to be the same. I intended to try out a couple new recipes during the dinner shift, and had three quarters of my workspace occupied with ingredients, equipment, and a general mess. All of a sudden, tickets started ringing in. I shoved everything to the side as best I could, and started making desserts. It was going alright until I reached up to grab a plate and knocked down a pint container of powdered gelatin. The gelatin spilled all over me, my station, and my mise en place (all of the things I needed to make the desserts). All the mise was garbage at that point, needing to hastily be replaced with what I had back up or what I needed to make on the fly (meaning, right NOW).

As tickets continued to ring in, I scrambled to scrape up all the gelatin, which stuck to the station almost immediately. My blood pressure started rising, and I started to sweat a little. The sweat "activated" the gelatin, causing it to stick to my skin and form a weird crust that was almost impossible to scrub off. The whole situation was comically frustrating. Who else does this happen to?? Not long ago, a non-food industry friend emailed me and said when discussing me and my job with her teacher friends, they were all "oohing and ahhing" and saying how glamorous it must be. She compared the reaction to as if she said her friend was Jennifer Lopez. Tonight was about as glamorous as it gets, covered in a caking of animal proteins. I bet J Lo does not have to deal with that.

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Life of a Pastry Chef: Inside Look #1

True fact: I had a milkshake for breakfast today. I tried to go the normal route and get coffee and a bagel from Dunkin' Donuts, but when I pulled in, every parking spot was filled, and I said f*** it, I'm having a McDonald's milkshake. I rarely eat fast food, but I do frequently eat dessert for breakfast. I'm living every kid's dream.

When most people hear I work at a restaurant, their first reaction is usually something along the lines of "Wow! You must eat so much good food!" While this is occasionally the case, mostly it's not. Don't get me wrong - if I wanted to eat, mostly I could. But I'm usually too busy, too tired, or too lazy to find something for myself to eat and get through the day on handfuls of chocolate chips, bites of cookies, and the odd potato chip (they're part of a raw fish dish we serve as an appetizer). Sugar is in abundance in my part of the kitchen, and it doesn't always lead to the healthiest diet. Did I mention the pastry kitchen is right next to the barista station? There was a day where all I ate was marshmallows and 4 shots of espresso. Definitely didn't sleep that night! On my days off, I make a concerted attempted to eat "real" foods and balance my sugar intake for the week.

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