A Wedding Tasting

Today I actually did go in later – chef’s orders. I couldn’t stay away too long though, although I didn’t have a whole lot to do since I prepped so much the past few days and only thirty-six were booked tonight, I did have a wedding tasting to prep for. I began with setting up my station, then getting what I needed for the tasting – three chocolate brownies, three Bailey’s cheesecakes, mango passionfruit sorbet, champagne sorbet, some petit fours, some madeleine mix, and a bunch of bread rolls. The tasting was for six people – the bride, groom, plus both sets of parents. 

Next I made spice bread croutons, cut a tray of crème brulée, baked and trayed the petit fours, made blue cheese parfait, assembled a tray of fruit flowers, did my bread rolls (tomato basil, parmesan thyme, and raisin walnut), made crispy basil garnish, and cut passionfruit. I didn’t really make much today, no need to, just topped up what I needed. Then I cleaned up, set up, and made sure my wedding tasting desserts were ready – the cheesecake requires a swirl of whipped cream and a chocolate stick, and both require chocolate sauce on the plates. I did the chocolate sauce and cream in advance, because I thought this is what the pastry cook had told me, and there was a big controversy with chocolate sauce going missing at some other tasting….(luckily I was off that day). Anyway, when the time for the tasting came, all was going well except apparently two of the steaks for the mains were both cooked medium, when they had requested medium, medium well, and well done. They then asked to taste just another piece of beef cooked medium well, but the chef said no, that wasn’t what they had requested to taste. All this caused the desserts to be delayed quite a lot, and when the time finally came, the pastry cook said I had to redo the chocolate sauce and the whipped cream, and basically I had done everything wrong. Thanks for telling me this in the first place, I never did a wedding where they served the cheesecake, and when we serve brownies that is not how we serve the ice cream with it. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, “This is how we do it here.” Shouldn’t the wedding tasting be exactly like the wedding???

Wedding tasting petit fours

Other than that service went relatively smoothly – the final number was forty-eight and all tables of two except for two. It was really quiet, and then I would get five orders at once. I hate nights like that. Aside from this, I found myself standing around a bit during service, because I really had nothing to do or prep. I relabelled everything on the pastry section, but that didn’t take too long.