All Things Brunch

Brunch is served every Sunday from September to May in one of the restaurants at my hotel. The product list is generally the same.

1. Cheesecake (any choice either a white or a chocolate).
2. White Cake (if cheesecake is white only one of these.)
3. Chocolate Cake (if cheesecake is chocolate, we only do flourless).
4. Flourless Cake (constant).
5. Baked Item (doesn't matter what it is but it must be baked).
6. Brulee (white or "dark")
7. Pannacotta (white or "dark")
8. Petit Fours (two types, almost always a version of an opera)
9. Cookies, chocolate dipped strawberries, toffee, white/dark truffles.

What bothers me about the list? This week I made a guinness stout cake, it's brown, but does not contain any form of chocolate. However, because it is brown it goes in the chocolate category...because it's brown.

The same goes for brulee and pannacotta. It has to be white or dark? What is that? Why not just make something that is tasty and in season? No, white or dark. Which limits me greatly on the number of flavors that I can make dark: chocolate, nut, coffee, tea (which he hates and ridicules me everytime I pick this, as I have a love for chocolate and earl grey together.) Yeah, I'm still trying to find more "dark" stuff.

I would love to come up with items that are new and different for this list and I try every week. This becomes a problem though, because the person who works production with me has decided that they don't want to make stuff that they don't "like to eat." Which to me is the stupidest most limiting thing you can do to yourself when you are a chef or a cook.

This holds true especially when you aren't even going to get to eat any of the product you make! For example: Bananas make me physically ill, I love them, but they make me vomit, quite literally. That does not stop me from producing a cake that includes them as a carmelized layer between a peanut butter cremeux and a chocolate bavarian. The combination is so incredibly phenominal! How can I keep someone else from enjoying something so lovely?

My brain is overloaded with ideas and the desire to make something that will better my skills. I would like to at least attempt things at work, even if they do not turn out, the process of learning about flavors and techniques are important. This week, for example, I learned that when you forget to put the baking soda in a guinness stout cake (because the phone will not stop ringing), the cake will still rise and the texture is completely soft and without the gummy texture of the proper recipe.

This week while attempting to branch out and do things that I haven't done for an age, I made raspberry mousse coated in chocolate glaze on vanilla short dough. The mousse was extremely tasty, strong raspberry flavor not masked by the addition of too much sugar. It could use an extra sheet or two of gelatin to make sure that it will last for a few hours at room temperature for next time. I could also use a little more practice placing the mousse on the cookie so that it looks a little cleaner, but all in all I think that it turned out alright.

I also made a sliced apple tart. Short dough on the bottom, almond cream, and sliced apples with a liberal shake of cinnamon sugar. I like the look of the apple tart. I find the tart elegant and it looks like it took a good amount of time to make even though it really does not.

Perhaps I need to press my hand a little when it comes to making things that would be better than what we normally serve. I think that I sometimes take a back seat to the other people in the shop, because my ideas have been pushed aside as too complicated or something out of the ordinary for the people who live here. I would not only like the opportunity to "play" and practice my skills, but to push people to try things that are more elegant and taste better than the product that we inevitably serve every Sunday.