HEC

This week has been crazy.

In addition to multiple exams and a twenty eight page paper, I've been working at Hotel Ezra Cornell (a massive three day function organized by the Hotel School students). There has been very, very little sleeping the past few days.

I joined a team of three that was making desserts for an after dinner cocktail party.

Prep started wednesday, continued until this afternoon, and the function was tonight from 9 pm to midnight. It was my first true experience with catering (everything was made at the Statler, put onto a speedrack, loaded onto a truck, driven to the biomedical engineering building--while our team stood in the back of the truck holding onto our pastries--and unloaded). The desserts were finished and plated on site. The design team was amazing and managed to turn the atrium of the biomed engineering building into an opulent lounge.

The team: myself, Victoria (a senior at the hotel school from Singapore), Alexa Quiros (crazy talented junior here, went to CIA for pastry), and Tommy (a 32 year old senior hotel student who has a culinary degree from CIA as well as a bachelors in accounting from UCLA). Also, Ben *I don't remember his last name* joined us on site to plate.

The menu:

Truffles--white chocolate truffles. Pink ones are cherry flavored, blue ones are blueberry, and orange are orange. They are rolled in finely ground cake crumbs (that match their flavor).

Marshmallows--white peach marshmallows dusted with violet pop rocks (making pop rocks, by the way, is awesome).

"Happiness"--these are the orangish squares. Bottom layer is a sugar cookie dough, followed by guava puree, then a coconut jaconde (sponge cake), passion fruit mousse, and a mango glaze. So. Damn. Good.

Macaroons--pistachio macaroons with a pistachio mint filling, raspberry puree, and topped with white chocolate and raspberry powder

Vacherin--vanilla poppy seed vacherin filled with white chocolate, lemon pastry cream, topped with strawberry and candied lemon

Tomorrow I'm going back to work a chocolate demonstration for HEC guests (apparently someone at the hotel school thinks I know a lot about chocolate.....). Will probably make mojito bonbons and caramelized white chocolate truffles.

Pictures of tonight's event are below.