Westin Week 3

Last week at Westin, I had a lot more to do this week. I stayed back a few more hours to help the chef. She was very nice and entrusted me with a lot of tasks that last week. 

I was lucky because it was the end of Autumn season for high tea, so I had the opportunity to see the new menu for the Winter high tea. It was the transition from Autumn to Winter where the cookies changed from autumn leaves to winter snowflakes.

 I started rolling out the pastry and cutting out the snowflake cookies. I made at least 300 pieces of the snowflake cookies and then baked them 6 trays at a time for about 15minutes. Then left it to cool for the next stage of covering the fondant.

Snowflake cookies

Baked snowflake cookies

Marble bench top 

I had to make about 100 pieces of the autumn leaf cookies to cater for the last days of autumn. I had fun mixing the red and yellow fondant to make a marble effect and got a very nice autumn colour. Placed the fondant on the baked cookie with maple syrup as the glue. Then piped some green icing sugar and dusted it with coloured sugar. 

Mixing colours

Autumn leaves

More autumn leaves

I made a tray of banana and pecan muffins, blueberry and lemon muffins , raspberry and white chocolate muffins. Then I sandwiched about 40 croissants with ham, cheese and tomatoes. Another 60 lemon meringue pie shots were made and kept in the fridge. Next was dipping the macarons in chocolate and topped with hazelnuts. 

Muffins

Croissants

Preparing Lemon Meringue Pie Shots

Lemon Meringue Pie Shots

Chocolate hazelnut macarons

More fruit tarts

Heavy duty stand mixer

Now I get to continue with the snowflake cookies. Since it is a snowflake, the fondant was just plain white and the icing was a very sweet light sky blue. Then a edible pearl was placed in the centre and some silver sparkling dust was sprinkled over it. It looks so pretty and it really represents winter. 

Snowflake Cookies

Some of the proposed winter high tea items for the menu

This is the final look of the Winter high tea. There are scones on the top tray with whipped cream and raspberry jam. The centre tray has the savoury snacks and the last tray has the cookies, strawberry shortcakes, puddings, chocolates and a chestnut brûlée. 

Wow! I am so happy with my experience at Westin. Even though it was really tiring at the end of the shift, I learnt a lot there. I did so many desserts in huge quantities, seen how real kitchen operates, use some of the heavy duty equipment and experienced the busy schedule in a hotel kitchen. Thank you chef for sharing your knowledge and for giving me so much opportunities to learn. 

Winter High Tea