The Holidays recap--Grand America gingerbread house

Wow, has it been really four months since I wrote last?  I have just been extremely busy, and my laptop getting infected with some gnarly viruses didn't help either.  In my last post, I have mentioned that the holiday season is going to be like the passing of a hurricane.  Well...that was an understatement.

It felt more like an Armageddon.

Everyday was 13 to 14 hour-shift, and over one hundred reservations for the hotel's High Tea became the norm.  I mean, the paycheck was nice and plump, but physically I was very much drained.  My hands were starting to develop arthritis/carpal tunnel from piping out an INSANE. NUMBERS. OF. MACARONS.
It was getting to the point where we were making at least two batches every day.  I kid you not.

But other than the crazy work hours, the holidays are very eventful and fun!  We have a tradition of making a large gingerbread house for display every Christmas.  This year, the new exec pastry chef took things to the next level--he designed and built a life-sized gingerbread house.  When completed, this thing was large enough to accommodate several people (as long as they were under 5'10" in height)...

The gingerbread house required a wooden frame to support its massive structure.  Then planks after planks of real gingerbread were staple-gunned to the frame.
This is one of the sides of the house during construction.

And just to show how huge this thing is, I took a pic of one of the workers laying gingerbread shingles on the roof.  Apparently, this gentleman is a former roofer before he got into the culinary field.

Of course, a house must have windows!  The windows for this house was made from sugar, cast inside a wooden frame.

The interior was laid out with slabs of rice Krispy treats for flooring and colorful chocolate truffles, gumballs, and candy canes for wall decor.

 
Then right by the window was a toy elf indulging on macarons...which, by the way, are real, made by none other than me and my coworker.  We were wondering where the heck some of our supply disappeared to.

 
The finished house.  Yes, it's massive, it's cool, pretty....but alas, the colored windows made it really hard to see the inside.  And what's the point of decorating the interiors if no one can even see it?
And here are the stats for this house.  We ended up using a whopping 1200 lbs. of flour, 400 lbs. of sugar, 1200 eggs, 160 qts. of molasses, 800 lbs. of powdered sugar, 200 lbs. of rice Krispy treats, 200 lbs. of isomalt, and 25 lbs. of chocolate!

And what did we do with it after the holidays?  Apparently the whole thing went into garbage.  Yep.  It was heart-wrenching.  It was painful.  I even suggested that we summon a bunch of children to make their Hansel and Gretel fantasy come true (what kid wouldn't want to chow down on a life-sized gingerbread house??). But alas, it was carted out and was never seen again...

Witch's High Tea at the Grand America

Happy belated Halloween to everyone!  During the week leading up to Halloween, we hold a special event called the Witch's Tea.  Instead of our usual tea pastries, we serve Halloween-themed goodies.

 

First up, Gingerbread zombies...

...with half of its head and leg bitten off.
We also made crispy meringue spiderwebs, then dipped them in chocolate.

 

Next year, maybe we can try piping out skeleton's claws??

 

We also made gravestone cookies--chocolate shortbread cookies sandwiched with chocolate mousse, just like chocolate-creme oreos.

For our entremet, we made blood orange mousse layered with joconde.  It is then finished with cocoa butter spray.  Originally, we decorated them with crossbones, but we special ordered some Halloween sugar decorations...

...and the results were much cuter. 
I didn't take a picture, but in addition to the above, there were Chocolate "ooze" cupcakes (chocolate cupcakes with raspberry jam filling, with purple frosting), cranberry-orange scones, and pate de fruit dusted with poprocks instead of sugar.  Because of this special event, the number of reservation had skyrocketed during this time, forcing me and my partner to stay longer hours.  We were both pretty drained after this whole ordeal.  Inbetween now and Thanksgiving is the time to (somewhat) catch up and relax a bit.  Cuz the holidays, I've heard, is going to be like an arrival of a hurricane...

Da New Executive Pastry Chef...

Our Executive Pastry Chef resigned a month or two ago.  He had accepted a position somewhere in Napa Valley as a group pastry chef.  All of us were pretty sad to see him go.  Then a few weeks later, the new exec arrived...and things have been quite interesting since then.

Definitely a lot of changes in the menu.  He pretty much wiped out everything the previous chef had implemented, replacing the pastries with his own creations.

First up, replacing the Black & White Berry Tart, is the Fruit Strip.  Sounds kinda sexy...
A big strip of puff pastry is baked off, then shmeared with pastry cream.  It then gets loaded with fruits.  And our new chef likes to emphasize the "loaded" part of this pastry.  I'll get into that later...

After finishing with apricot glaze, the rims are dusted with snow sugar, then cut.

Very pretty and colorful.
He then redid the previous chef's eclairs.  He first baked them off topped with what's called a craquelin--something very similar to a shortbread dough, sheeted out to 1.5mm thickness.  After filling them with cream, he finished by glazing them with--*GROAN*--fondant.

I honestly don't know of anyone who actually likes fondant.  As a matter of fact, most people I know don't like fondant at all.  Just sayin'...

This is our brand new pastry item, da Raspberry Cream Puff.  A choux puff (again baked with craquelin) filled with pastry cream, raspberries, whipped cream.

Our amenity cakes got a makeover as well.  Instead of the buttercream frosting, we are now glazing the chocolate mousse cake with black glaze and garnishing with crapload of chocolate decor.

 

The anniversary cakes got a similar makeover;  glazed on top, garnished with (again) crapload of chocolate decor.

There are still more new things, more changes.  It's gonna be a bit tough adjusting to all these changes and new things...

My first Utah State Fair...

All these years I've lived in Utah...I've never been to the state fair.  Or any state fair for that matter.  I've heard stories about it, how there are lots of farm animals, contests, crafts, and fried everything.  So when my friend invited me to go with her family (her dad had entered some vegetables in the contest), I was more than happy to join them to check it out.
We first stopped at a building that held all the crafts and culinary (...!!!) contests.

I. WANT.THIS. QUILT. This is the most creative quilt design I've ever seen!
There were also baked goods entries.  Some of the categories included yeast breads, quick breads, cookies, sourdough breads, etc...

 

What kinda bugged me was the judging criteria.  I mean, look at this banana bread--it totally collapsed!  And yet it won second place???  ...Well, as much as I would love to enter something in next year, I feel like I would be cheating for some reason...

We went outside to a light drizzle;  the glitzy, blingy ferris wheel jutting out into a grey, dingy sky.  There were plenty of games and rides typical of amusement parks.

But we couldn't forget why we were there to begin with.  My friend's dad had entered a vegetable (an Asian eggplant) so we had to see how he did...

Tomatoes after tomatoes after tomatoes. The entire place were filled with tables strewn with vegetables of all sorts...

...including this mutant carrot. This particular one won first place in the "Oddity" category.

 

Giant pumpkin contest.  The winner weighed 620 lbs.

 



Then we spotted her dad's eggplant...which had won first place!  Congrats!

We then ventured into the farm animal section.  Some were on sale, including this adorable bunny.

 

 

 

The barn had your usual farm animals; cows, pigs, sheep, goats, etc. 

 

The piglets were just so cute. And curious. One was so curious that it pressed its snout up against my phone right when I was about to snap a photo.

Every year, a local sculptor makes a sculpture...using a solid block of butter.  Impressive isn't it?

State fair was fun!  My friend encouraged me to enter some baked goods next year but...that's a definitive maybe.



High Tea at the Grand America

Hello all...nice to be back to blogging after two months of break.  Sorry, life has been hectic, with 8~12 hour shift workdays.  Man, we are busy!

 

Anyway, my last post (way back in August...) was about amenities for VIP guests.  After I'm done preparing for those, I prepare for the afternoon high tea.

 

During the High Tea, the guests are offered several selection of teas, tea sandwiches, strawberries with whipped cream, and assorted pastries.  The banquet kitchen prepares the sandwiches so I don't know what's being served.  But here are the tea pastries that we make...

 

We serve three kinds of baked goods, three kinds of pate de fruit (fruit pectin jellies), and three kinds of cold desserts.
In this picture--from the back, three flavors of pate de fruit: passionfruit, sour apple, and strawberry flavors.  The raspberry-filled linzer cookies are one of the baked goods.

The other two baked goods are scones and madeleines.  The scones are served with Devonshire cream, which is made with mascarpone and cream whipped together.

Our cold desserts.  From the back, Strawberry-Pistachio Bars, Praline bars, and Lemon-Meringue tartlets.  The Strawberry-Pistachio bars are alternating layers of strawberry mousse and pistachio dacquoise.  Praline bars are layers of crispy feuilletine-praline and chocolate mousse. My mom fell in love with these guys.  The Lemon-meringue tartlets are mini tartlet shells filled with raspberry jam and lemon cream.  We have to make all these from scratch--as in , bake off the dacquoise base, then make the mousse to assemble.  My pastry skills have improved significantly over the past few months.  With the upcoming holiday season, things are sure to get even busier...

Amentities at the Grand--for that special occasion. Or just cuz.

Ah, amenities--according to the Wiki, an amenity is defined as "something of a premium nature provided in addition to the room and its basics when renting a room at a hotel, motel, or other place of lodging".  Amenities at your average hotels can be anything from continental breakfast to those cute travel-sized shampoo and soaps.  But at five-star hotels, these amenities can get quite extravagant...

The guests places their orders with the room service, who calls us to get them prepared.  This day, I filled an order for an anniversary cake...
A strawberry or cholate mousse layer cake, frosted with buttercream.  The cake is already made and kept in the freezer

 

We also offer artisan truffles/chocolates and tuxedo strawberries....

 

This day wasn't too busy.  Hand-dipping six strawberries are a breeze, but when we get an order of 100 of these studs...things can get a little crazy.
This is the French Affair, a collection of French-inspired sweets: two Parisian macaroons, creme-filled chocolate cups, and chocolate bonbon coronets.

Of course, these aren't all the amenities offered at the hotel.  There are also cheese plates, antipasto platter, milk & cookies, and bottles of wine...but these are sent to the main kitchen, not to the pastry department.
Once the amenity orders are filled, I start preparing the pastries for the English Afternoon Tea.  My day goes by fairly quickly...

La Bonne Vie Pastries--Part II

 Aaaand here are the rest of the La Bonne Vie pastries...

 

S'more tarts.  Almond sucre tart shell, filled with ganache, topped with Italian meringue "marshmallows".  Torched to golden perfection.

 



 Mini cupcakes, three varieties: Chocolate w/mint frosting, Vanilla w/vanilla frosting, Red Velvet w/cream cheese frosting.  The other day I saw a little girl with the chocolate cupcake in hand, licking the minty frosting off the top like an ice cream cone...

 

Dipped strawberries, three varieties: Dark Chocolate dipped w/chocolate croquant, White chocolate dipped with white chocolate shavings, and white chocolate dipped w/pistachio flour.

 

Of course, we can't forget about the Parisian macarons.  We have seven flavors: pistachio, vanilla, strawberry, passionfruit, coconut, hazelnut, and salted caramel.  Italian meringue method is used here, which creates a more stable meringue and fuller textured macs.

 



In addition to the sweet dessert pastries, we also carry breakfast pastry items (courtesy of the bread team.  We have a whole group of people just doing breads).  Pictured here are croissants, pain au chocolat, almond brioche, and cream cheese danish.  Other options include mini coffeecakes and strawberry-almond croissants.

These pastries need to be delivered to the shop by 9AM.  My shift starts at 6AM, so I have three hours to get all these prepped.  It seems like I would have plenty of time, but each pastries take so much care to prepare that time just whizzes by.

Once I'm done with these morning duties, I tackle onto the next task...the amenities.  The hotel provides amenities to the guests as a special gift/occasion service.  These can include birthday and anniversary cakes, special treats, etc....but that's for the next post. ;)