Pastry Melioration: Mother's Day

It has been over six months now at the Four Seasons... everything is still exciting, challenging, and fills me with a sense of passion. What can I say? I love what I do... We rarely have a dull moment and the hotel itself has been very busy lately - in fact, this week, I am working six days. With that in mind, the time that I have to write this is short, but I did want to quickly post some pictures of work, as well as some work I've been doing and some work that the pastry team has been doing.

First of all, a unique item that I've never come across until recently:

The Kiwiberry

The Kiwiberry, from New Zealand, is about the size of a cherry tomato but has the same taste as a kiwi. There is no fuzzy exterior, so you can just pop them in your mouth (or, better yet, use them as an attractive garnish for a dessert) - these have a sweeter flavor, but are still tart and delicious.

These are a few pics of some celebration cakes I have done recently:

(This was for an employee, but I still had a blast making it.)

You may remember the S'more dessert from my last post? Well, one of our guests decided they wanted actual S'mores instead of our plated dessert - I was happy to oblige.

I toasted all of the marshmallows on small skewers and served them on a smoked wooden plate, then paired it with the traditional Graham Crackers and Hershey's Chocolate (which I had melted under the heat lamp, so they were nice a gooey). The idea was that they would build their own and it was a huge hit.

Speaking of S'more's, here is another play on the dessert for a small banquet event.

Same concept as our regular plated dessert, but paired with a blackberry sauce and blackberry compote.

Also, there was a menu change recently and this was one of the new changes...

A lemon chiffon cake with strawberry-rhubarb compote. It is topped with a white chocolate disc, with strawberries, rhubarb gel, whipped cream, edible flowers and a scoop of lemon-basil sorbet in the middle.

Last but not least, there was Mother's Day... the brunch (and preparation for it) was elaborate and over-the-top. I loved it all.

First of all was this zucchini cupcake (with caramel cream cheese frosting) that was served in a small terra cotta pot. All of the cupcakes were then topped with edible flowers...