Lollipop, Lollipop, Oh Lolly Lolly Lolly

This morning I was in work for 11:00 because no one told me what time to come. I was surprised to find the head chef hard at work in the pastry section when I walked in, and he glared at me. I said, “You didn’t tell me to come in at 12:00 today.” He pulled out his phone and said, “Yes, but it’s only 10:58.” He then went on to tell me he had to make two hundred individual-sized Bailey’s cheesecakes for the executive chef for some function, and that’s what he was working on when I walked in. He moved over to give me some space. I assumed he would have preferred I come in at 12:00 so he could use the entire pastry shop to work and finish before I got in, but no, apparently he was just getting started. He had the crust done, and was starting on the filling, and spent the entire day making the cheesecakes. I mean, it is a lot of work, but it doesn’t take the entire day to make them - and he wasn't really doing other jobs in between. So either he, or his ingredients, were taking up some space in pastry all day, but I managed around it.

I began with making a batch of creamy mint and lime white chocolate ganache. Then I moved on to my major, simple but time-consuming and fun job of the day – making lollipops. I made about three hundred and fifty of them for petit fours. All the while I was singing, ‘lollipop, lollipop, oh lolly lolly lolly….’ They could tell I was in a much better mood today. Then on to my basic jobs – petit fours, making some fruit flowers, assembling delices, breads (tomato basil, apple walnut, garlic and herb), cutting brulée, organizing sorbet, etc. And I watched as every single person who walked into the pastry shop, took a handful of the crumb crust for the cheesecakes and eat it. At this rate, chef would have to make another batch. He got me to taste the cheesecake mix, and I thought it was good, but on the advice of another chef, added another half bottle of Bailey’s or so.

Lollipops

I didn’t have too much to prep for today; we only had thirty-six diners in. Tomorrow both I and the other pastry chef are off, so a different chef will be on pastry, so I made a list for him and prepped the sorbet and breads just so he would have less to do. I was planning to give the entire pastry area a good cleaning as well, as the sous chef is back tomorrow and he is really strict on that sort of thing, so everyone was going crazy cleaning and labelling today. But the head chef was using the pastry area, so I had to wait until after service to clean up, causing me to get out of work pretty late.