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.

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Tis the Season: Gingerbread

All the cardboard templates

For the past few weeks, my sous chef Kristen and I have eaten, slept and breathed gingerbread. I had the big idea way back in the summer to do a gingerbread display for the restaurant, and as it got closer, my plans for it got bigger. When I told Kristen we would be replicating 9 casinos of the Atlantic City boardwalk, I think she wanted to hit me and/or quit.

Home Depot

A gingerbread house of any sort is a major undertaking. One consisting of 9 detailed houses is setting yourself up for an impossible mission. But my motto has always been "go big or go home," so that's what we did. Some time around Thanksgiving, I started by carefully measuring and cutting out cardboard templates to use to model and cut the actual gingerbread pieces. While I was doing that, Kristen was making 30 pounds of gingerbread that we'd all roll out (a major work out) and cut into the house pieces for later assembly.

Even with everything labeled carefully, we had 2 mystery pieces

Each piece was painstakingly iced after consulting many pictures of how each casino looked and even driving by some of them. I really need to tip my hat to Kristen; she is a phenomenally talented decorator, and a lot of the more intricate work was done by her. I was definitely the architect of this project and she was the artist.

Airbrushing Revel

Trump Plaza

Assembly turned out to be much easier than we were expecting. Because the templates had been carefully constructed, the pieces fit together almost perfectly. I had gone to Home Depot to have boards custom cut to fit on our display table so we could assemble the houses on the boards in the back and fit them onto the table in pieces. Finishing up all the small details seemed like it would never end, but sometime last night around midnight, we were ready to move the house to the front of the restaurant.

I'm pretty proud of the end result. I think our hard work definitely shows in it, and it feels good to finally be done with it (with some slight maintenance that will likely be required). If you're in the NJ area, stop by and check it out!

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A Pastry Chef's Thanksgiving

Turkey Dinner #1, mostly pie

One of the worst parts of working in a restaurant is having to work the holidays. Since I've started professionally baking, I've always been at restaurants that were open 365 days a year. The first year I had to work on Christmas, I bawled my eyes out in the walk-in refrigerator. Thinking about how my family was opening presents and listening to Christmas carols while I worked brunch service (something that would make anyone want to cry regardless of it being a holiday...) was just too much for me, and I had a tiny meltdown. Fortunately, one of my coworkers found me, gave me a hug, and told me to get my ass back upstairs to work. Since then, I've toughened up considerably and working the holidays has become a slight annoyance, but nothing that will cause tears. I've come to view my coworkers as a family, albeit a very, very dysfunctional family and spending the holidays with these people now feels almost normal to me.

It was also one of our chef's mom's birthdays

This Thanksgiving was the first holiday our restaurant was opened for, and it sort of caught me by surprise. With the whole month of trying to transition to an entirely new dessert menu, the hurricane, and my birthday, I kind of forgot about Thanksgiving. I was trying to cram too much into that week, and while everything got done, there were stressful moments. Like when I showed up on Thursday to realize that not only did we have just one working oven (which has been the case for a few weeks now), pastry would need to share it with all the turkey-roasting. And we were opening for dinner service four hours earlier. So all the bread, turkeys, assorted side dishes, and desserts needed to come out of one oven in about half the time we normally have. No sweat, right? Um, cue the tears in the walk-in....Almost.

Pastry's contribution for family meal

The chef/cook team cobbled together a "family meal" for our staff- the term used for the pre-shift meals a lot of restaurants have for employees. I made a couple apple crisps (one of my favorite things to bake, using the same recipe I learned in preschool, no joke) and pecan pies. Kristen, my sous chef, and I sat down to quickly eat some turkey, but weren't really into the side dishes. What amazes me about Thanksgiving is how every family has a roster of side dishes that is particular and unique to them, and every family thinks others makes the exact same sides. For instance, I wrongly believed every family had Stovetop stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, and canned cranberry sauce. Whoever prepared our family meal thought the standards are brussel sprouts, collard greens, and mashed sweet potatoes. And maybe they're onto something...Those mashed sweet potatoes were delicious.

Wawaaaaaa

Feeling relatively unsatisfied though, we begged a friend to stop at Wawa on his way to work and bring us a turkey bowl. For those of you unfamiliar with Wawa, you're missing out. It's pretty much the best convenience store you can imagine, but better. Turkey bowls were delivered and consumed, ovens were cleared, and things were looking up.

About an hour later, a server misfired a dinner, so Kristen and I ended up with a turkey dinner for 4, making that our third turkey meal in under three hours. Which made this day maybe the best Thanksgiving ever by some people's standards. We sold a lot of desserts, had some fun, and at the end, went out for some beers.

Pecan Pie Bread Pudding with Maple Bourbon Ice Cream

Thursday also marked the end of my 1 month trial period, and I'm happy to say it went well and my promotion to executive pastry chef is now official. That is definitely something big to be thankful for. I'm excited about the month to come. Holiday season is one of the best baking seasons, and this year will be no different. Stay tuned for a giant gingerbread display that Kristen and I are putting together. It's going to be epic. Or a major fail. We shall see...

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Birthday Cake!

Walllll-eeeeee

For the past four years, I've really wanted a Wall-E cake. Unfortunately, I'm usually the one who makes the birthday cakes, and I frequently make my own birthday cake. I swear this is not as sad as it sounds.

Sometimes it's sad to cut a cake this nice

This year, my birthday (November 17 kind of took me by surprise. I've been so busy with working and the new menu that I almost forgot it was coming up. I think it crossed my mind to make cupcakes for my coworkers, but things got hectic and I totally forgot.

Kristen with the Wall-E eye post cutting

I was totally surprised when my pastry cook and friend Kristen showed up with a Wall-E cake on Saturday for me. Kristen is a really talented cake artist, and she's made some cool things for us at the restaurant. This one really "took the cake" though. The level of detail was incredible, and it looked so much like Wall-E. It was probably the coolest birthday cake I've ever had (sorry Mom!).

We cut it up before service and it was easily enough Funfetti cake to feed the entire restaurant staff. That amount of sugar probably is what got most of us through an insanely busy Saturday night service.

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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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The Making of a Menu Tasting

For any of of you who noticed I haven't posted in a while, my apologies. It was a super busy week, and I'm really excited to share the details of it. My boss Mallory, the executive pastry chef, decided last week that she would not be returning to the restaurant after her maternity leave. I am really sad to see Mallory go - we had a lot of fun working together and she's the one who pulled me into this crazy restaurant opening. I'm so happy for her and her husband Joe though that they'll be welcoming baby Grace really shortly.

So many lists

6 new ice cream bases alone

I was planning on covering as pastry chef during Mal's maternity leave, but with the position now open, I was asked to put together a menu tasting for Chef Marc (as in, the Iron Chef ) in order to "try out" for the job. Menu tastings are standard in the industry, and I've done a couple before, but this one was way more intense. First of all, instead of just a couple items, I would be presenting an entire menu, and second, I only had a week to put it together. Pastry is complicated. For every dessert, there might be 5-8 components to the plate. Sauces, garnishes, ice creams, etc. For six desserts, I needed to make 30 different items. I made list upon list and was beyond organized and prepared. And then on last Monday, our corporate chef, Chris, called me to ask if it would be possible to do my tasting three days earlier than it was supposed to be... In New York. American Cut is down in Atlantic City, so this would entail packing up all my stuff and driving it up to the city (no joke, the driving was probably the most daunting aspect. I'm a city girl through and through and this is the first time in the past 10 years almost that I've had to have a car). Working in a kitchen, you learn to roll with the punches, so I said sure no prob and immediately reworked all my lists.

Candy Bar Cake

Caramel Apple Tarts & Chocolate Bread Pudding

The day before the tasting, I packed up all of my baking, put my ice creams on dry ice, and carefully loaded everything into my car.  I drove up to my parents house, spent the night there and finished some last minute baking the next morning. Everything got reloaded into my car, and I was NYC-bound. Driving into the city went smoothly, surprisingly, and I was at the restaurant in no time, unpacking car and setting up for the tasting. Presentation was supposed to start at 4:30 pm, and at 4:27 pm, I walked upstairs (the prep kitchen is in the basement) to find the restaurant filled with smoke. Turns out there was a little fire. It was quickly put out, but the restaurant definitely got a little chaotic for a while. The way I tell the story, Chef Marc pulled a pan of FIRE out of the oven with his bare hands. Okay, so maybe he used side towels, but still, impressive. A pan.of.fire. Kind of crazy. Tasting was pushed back, and I sort of just awkwardly and nervously waited in the basement kitchen. About an hour and a half later, we finally got started, and the presentation itself is sort of a blur. That's when I stopped taking pictures; you'll have to use your imagination.

Plating Diagrams

I presented one dish at a time, dropping one off and immediately starting to plate the next. Poor Chef Marc - this tasting contained probably a week's worth of sugar crammed into 40 minutes. Even I would have a hard time digesting that much dessert, and I eat cookie dough for breakfast. Like five times a week, at least. After what felt like the longest day ever, it was over, and I headed downstairs to clean up, get changed, and wait for feedback.

Plating

A quick note on Chef Marc... He is pretty much the nicest person I've ever worked for. I'm not just saying that because he's my boss and can potentially be reading this blog (if that's the case, Hey Chef!), but because it's genuinely true. He cares about people in a way that is rare in this industry, and is really invested in the people who work for him. Anyway, so he and I sit down to review the menu tasting, and he had really positive things to say and also some very helpful comments.


In the end, the tasting went really well, and I was offered the opportunity to try out the position. We're going to do a four week trial period, and assuming the transition goes smoothly, it will be made official after the month. I'm already a week into it, and everything's been great so far - new menu items debuting, smooth services, and a great exchange of ideas between me and my team.

Honestly, I probably can't even explain how excited and happy this all has made me. This is a goal I've worked extraordinarily hard for over the past few years, and it's incredibly rewarding to see all of that effort come to fruition. There were so many times over the course of this where I could have doubted why I was pursuing this career (and I believe many of my friends & family did after seeing me give up my nights, weekends, holidays, and comfortable paychecks, just to name a few things). Even when it was incredibly trying - working three side jobs just to supplement my measly cook's income in NYC - I remained focused and dedicated, and it feels so, so good to have that manifest into something great. I am so excited about what lies ahead.

Out celebrating with Marc's corporate chefs, Phet & Chris

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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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