Work experience at Westin Hotel Melbourne Day 1

Finally, after studying for almost a year, it is now time to go see the real world. I was placed at Westin Hotel Melbourne for 3 weeks to gain some work experience. I have been looking forward to this for so long. 

I am scheduled to work on Thursdays and Fridays and it starts from 7am to 2pm. I heard from some friends of their experiences at the hotel and I kept wondering how my day will be. I was so excited and nervous at the same time. I barely slept the night before and was up at 4.45am. I got ready and left home at 6.10am. Met up with a friend and walked there together. Got there around 6.25am and went straight to the changing room and got into my uniform. 

Went into the kitchen and met the Chef. She showed us around, met a few more chefs and toured around the kitchen to familiarise with the environment. Then work begins.

In school we learn how to do things in a small quantity. How to half recipes, how to use a quarter of an egg at times. But here we go by the kilos. Everything was huge. The stand mixer was so big and the bar mixer was as big as a vacuum cleaner. 

I was given the task to make lemon curd this morning. I used 3 liters of lemon juice to make the lemon curd. Then I made chocolate ganache with 4kg of chocolate. It was a tough job trying to cut a big block of chocolate into small chunks. 

Then I was assigned to make muffins. I was taught that muffin batters shouldn't be over mixed and has to be baked immediately but today I am amazed to see how the batter was left beating for quite some time. The batter can even be stored in the fridge for later use. The muffins still rose beautifully. I made mini apple & walnut muffins and mini pear & ricotta cheese muffins for a lunch function. 

Muffins ready to bake

I also made lemon and blueberry muffins , banana and pecan muffin, raspberry and white chocolate muffins. These were big muffins that were served at the hotel lobby every day.

After the muffins, I made 35 fruit skewers. I cut 1 melon and 1 cantaloupe into cubes. There were also grapes and big strawberries. The skewer starts with a melon cube, grape, cantaloupe cube and topped with a strawberry. The skewers were placed on a plate and passionfruit syrup was drizzled over them. One thing that I noticed here is the amount of wastage. In order to get a consistent and firm cube size of the melon, a lot of the flesh of the fruit was wasted. I wish I had a bag to take the scraps home. 

Unfortunately I only have one photo to share. It was such a great experience and I hope I don't forget what I have learnt today. 

Week 32 Plating up dessert

Another week of decorating the plates for desserts. Creativity is a talent and it is quite interesting to see how everyone has a slightly different way of doing the same thing. I learnt from everyone in class. I may not be a very creative person but I really do enjoy playing with decorations. I googled and searched for pictures to see how others did it and try to learn from them. Sometimes, I can get some inspiration from others and come up with my own creation but sometimes I can go quite blank. I have to say this week is certainly not my best week in terms of creativity. 

Well, we baked a few simple items for the day. We had flourless orange cake , choux pastry where we made profiteroles, swans, chocolate eclairs and then there was a cranberry jelly dessert. 

Since last week, I tried to have a linear design to most of the desserts, this week I thought I will use more circles and round shapes. We only had to plate up one of the choux pastry dessert and so my partner and I chose the swans. I have to say this is really the one that I am least happy with. We were taught to keep the decoration simple but I think this is just a little too plain. 

Swans

Swans in love

 The jelly dessert was suppose to be a dessert which is easy to digest. So we were not suppose to use chocolate or cream as part of the decoration. Our trainer was struggling to plate his jelly dessert up because of all the restriction. The jelly was very soft and made it hard to get out of the mould without breaking it. I decided to use a nice little glass to fill it and serve it with the glass itself. That way, I won't risk breaking the jelly and it gives it a good height. So i kept the design rather simple with some fruits and a few drops of couli as decoration. I think this one I am quite happy with. 

Cranberry Jelly

 Last one was the flourless orange cake, I cut the cake into a small round cylinder shape. Dusted it with icing sugar and placed a candied orange peel and chocolate swirl on the cake. I wanted to try free hand chocolate piping on the plate and this was what I did. It looks like an "L" or "S" . Maybe can be a logo for a cake shop. Ha Ha.

Flourless Orange Cake

 The flourless orange cake was quite nice but a little sweet for me. The profiteroles were delicious. I think I ate most of it. Well, it may not have been my best work but still, I had lots of fun plating up.

Products of the day

Chocolate eclairs that we didn't plate up

Week 31 New Term - Parfait

A new term begins and new things to learn. The 2 weeks break has been so much fun and the first day back to school was actually a little drag. But when came the day to do practical work, I was back in the mood to bake! 

This term we learn more about special diets. Baking to cater for different diets such as vegetarian, lactose intolerance, diabetics, gluten free or allergies such as nuts.

The menu for the day was rather simple. We only had macadamia parfait , dried fruit meringues, Scottish shortbread and a flourless chocolate cake. We spent more time with the plating up than the baking which I thought was really fun. 

We started with the parfait first because it needed about 4 hours to set in the freezer. The parfait had no gelatine in it so it was safe for vegetarians. Instead of using macadamias, we were provided with almonds. Hmm.... most apparent reason is that macadamias cost a lot more. Anyway, the nuts were roasted and then caramel was cooked and the nuts were poured into the caramel for a coating. Then it was left to cool on a silicone mat. After it was cooled, we processed it till little chunky and crumbly nuts. 

Then we cooked the eggs and sugar over a bain marie till it reached sabayon stage. The nuts were mixed into the egg mixture and it was cooled slightly and whipped cream was folded in. Then poured into moulds that has been lined with cling wrap. Then set in the freezer. 

Then we made dried fruit meringues which was really simple, basically it was whipping egg whites and raining in the sugar till it became stiff peaks. Then the dried fruits and chocolate chips were folded in. I wanted to play with shapes so I used heart shape and square moulds, then pipep in the meringues. They were baked for 20 minutes at 110˚C. The meringues were still crisp on the outer layer and slightly chewy in the centre. Then left to cool before assembling. 

Parfait with orange & cherry salad

 We had orange segments and cherries to decorate the plate together with the parfait. Then we topped it with the almond praline and had some crushed almonds on the side. 

Heart shape meringues 

 The square meringues were a little browner than the heart shape ones. But I decided to plate up the squares because I like the idea of square meringues.

Square shape meringues 

The scottish shortbread were really nice to eat. We were given freedom to be creative and somehow I felt like more linear designs today... so mostly squares and lines. Me and my partner agreed with using the same moulds that I used for the meringues. 

Scottish Shortbread

Flourless chocolate cake was a gluten free recipe suitable for those who can't have wheat in their diet. We baked them in a square tin and they looked like brownies. The crust had a nice crunch and the centre was soft and moist. It was actually quite nice to eat. I had the most fun decorating this one. I had the picture in my head but wasn't sure if I could execute the decoration. I am pretty happy with the end result. 

Flourless Chocolate Cake

 I cut the cake into 3 small bite size squares and each had a dollop of whipped cream on it and the on the top I placed a long strip of chocolate. On the side we brushed a little chocolate on the plate and placed a fresh strawberry on it. I thought it was simple and nice.  

Flourless Chocolate Cake with strawberry

The shortbreads were dipped in chocolate and some were drizzled with chocolate and dusted with icing sugar. Plating up was kept simple because I think less is more. 

Scottish Shortbread

 As for the meringues , we gave it a lot of height. We used 3 pieces of the square meringues and had some whipped cream sandwiched in between and then had chocolate filigrees on top. On the side of the plate we had some nuts and some orange peel .

Dried fruit meringue

 At the end of the class, our trainer came to look at our work and he was happy with our work. He said "excellent! , very good! " I was so happy to hear that! I am sure I have a lot more to learn in terms of plating up desserts. It was a good start to the term. 

Flourless Chocolate Cake 

Products of the day