Mooch: Homemade Confections

This Week’s Latest Scoop:

Mooch has been slaving away making jars of frozen goodness this week and has a line up ready for you! It has been so refreshing to have the freedom of creating flavours and combining the expected with the unexpected, for example Black & Blue(berry) ice cream with a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg creating a woodsy spice. Each flavour is created by hand, in microbatches (4 pints per batch!!) and can…

Fast forward three days later, I had made and sold Raspberry Mint Sorbet, Madagascar Vanilla Bean, and Black & Blue(berry) ice cream- dark like these berries with a spiced woodsy feel. The demand and support was incredible, I was churning out ice cream just in time for them to be picked up by hungry Moochers! After the first week with my ice cream maker, I knew this had to become a Mooch staple.

Introducing, Mooch’s Microbatch Ice Cream: homemade, fresh, unique.

We are currently using an emailing list to keep Moochers updated on the new flavours that roll out on a weekly basis. To be added to the list, please send us a message! Flavours are sold by the pint in mason jars for $12 ($10 when you bring back the jar!), on a first come first serve basis.

Big News for Mooch!

Hello Moochers! Sorry for the bit of a hiatus from posts and Moochables, I’ve been expanding my culinary brain and talent with the chefs at Blue Water Cafe + Raw Bar in Vancouver’s trendy Yaletown! I have had the privilege of working with there after my stint at Four Seasons Vancouver and have added flavours and colours to my growing palate. Without further delay, I am very happy and excited to…

The In’s & Out’s of Catering at Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver: Part 2

The menus at each function consisted of a salad, soup, entrée and dessert. At the off-site event, the entrée options were either meat or vegetarian; whereas the in-house event had entrée options of fish, meat, or vegetarian with a different starch for each dish. In both cases, the vegetarian entrées were plated as needed and plated by one person whose responsibility also included restocking the…

The In’s & Out’s of Catering at Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver: Part 1

            Catering at Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver, whether in-house or off-site, comes with a central goal: to replicate and execute dishes quickly without sacrificing attention to detail. In case the challenge of plating over 200 exact replicas of a dish in a time crunch isn’t enough, the changing environment where the kitchen staff work can cause adaptations in the type of equipment used,…

Je Vais Prend Tout Les Macarons

Translation? I’ll take all the macarons! I last wrote about these finicky French sandwich cookies when I made them at The Culinary Institute, I mentioned how challenging they are and how that challenge drives me to perfect the method in which they are made. Refresh your memory here. Well Moochers, I’ve done it! I researched different methods online and found a variance in how people made their…

Vanilla Bean Cream Puffs with Caramel Sauce

Vanilla Bean Cream Puffs on a bed of Caramel and dusted with Powdered Sugar This was my day off from work at the Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver or shall I say, “day off”. I find baking at home almost harder than baking at The Culinary Institute or Four Seasons because the kitchen isn’t solely dedicated to baking; the equipment is good enough for the “home cook”, but to be making treats good enough…

Individual & Production Pastries: Containers

I just couldn’t “contain” myself when I saw these adorable little glasses; I used them for my Pina Colada Rice Pudding, made with shredded coconut and fresh pineapple. In class, we looked at the advantages of using containers, both edible and non-edible. Containers are great ways of keeping buffets neat, tidy, and easy to refresh with more items. When made from something edible, they can be…

We’re Not at CIA Anymore, Toto

During my time at The Culinary Institute of America, I was taught by some of the best Chefs around. Their decades of experience in the industry was the most valuable part of my time at CIA; being able to learn techniques, tried and true ways of producing consistent products was something I get to take away with me wherever I go. Each Chef had their own “pet peeve”, something that drove them…

Individual & Production Pastries: Macarons

The little delicate sandwiches that grace the showcases of French bakeries like Laduree and Bouchon Bakery, are no longer a big mystery to me on how to make them. For my 21st birthday, I was given a gift certificate to take a class at French Made Baking in Vancouver to learn how to make these tricky little morsels. I still haven’t had the chance to use the certificate, but after having the…

I’ve been working at Four Seasons Hotel for the past two weeks and Mooch has also been doing very well; since starting back up at the beginning of May I have had seven orders already. Thank you to all my supporters and Moochers, please keep the love coming! The most popular of them is a new addition, a French macaron tower. Every time I make them, I hear Chef Difilippo telling me that years ago when Chef Isaac was just starting out, he went to a restaurant in New York and ordered a dessert with macarons. They were so good that he had to meet the Chef who made them. And in the kitchen were trays of macaron shells that didn’t make the cut- the lesson? That even the best Chefs have trouble with the finicky French dessert. The day Chef Difilippo told me that, I took it as motivation to have more usable shells than snacks to eat later. On top of each of the macarons, I pipe designs and messages in dark chocolate, Chef Jorin do I get a 10 yet? As of May 3rd, Mooch was fully booked for the rest of the month!

Four Seasons has me working the breakfast shift, preparing baked goods for the banquets, Yew Restaurant, and the buffet. I’ve had the opportunity to help Banquet Chef, Michael Arnot with plating, and talk to Yew Restaurant’s Executive Chef Ned Bell (mostly about his lack of enthusiasm for pop artist, The Weeknd). Four Seasons has given me many opportunities to use my CIA knowledge, as all the tasks seem basic after having learned how to do them in the Teaching Kitchen. For Mother’s Day, I plated 300 desserts for the buffet under a major time crunch (Chef Mark Burton is injured so we all had to step it up). I plated 100 strawberry pistachio tarts which brought me back to being in Individual Production Pastries with Chef Difilippo, and rather than glaze the fruit with a brush Chef Burton blew my mind as he used a spray bottle and spritzed the whole tray at once! I also plated up a beautiful dessert with milk chocolate and passion fruit ganache, topped with a passion fruit creme, and a passion fruit macaron with chocolate ganache all inside a chocolate tart shell. Each little piece of art was finished with a piece of gold leaf- just like the Opera cake I made in Basic & Classical Cakes with Chef Isaac. The last dessert pictured is a torte, not a cake (because it has more than three layers) made with raspberry and mango. This week was the first where I’m working the breakfast shift alone- bright and early. Stay tuned for an update on flying solo! Tomorrow I’m headed to the Peace Arch Border to cater desserts for the Peace Arch Hospital Gala.

Strawberry Pistachio Tart

Raspberry Mango Torte

Chocolate Passion

I work on occasion with Gerhard Weitzel, who worked with Thomas Haas back when he first started at Four Seasons and is a very close friend of his, Gerhard thought I had been transferred from another Four Seasons rather than fresh out of school- so thank you, CIA Chefs for teaching me everything I know.

To learn more about the wonderful Chefs that I am lucky to call my mentors, check out my Professional References page!

Baking and writing with love,

Mooch

Individual & Production Pastries: Petit Fours

The term “petit fours” translates to “small oven” in French. They were given this name as they were traditionally baked in a small oven beside the main oven. These two-bite pastries take a lot of work, between evenly layering the cake and garnishing the tops with piped chocolate, there are a couple very tedious steps… Once the cake layers are baked, they are stacked with a thin layer of jam…

Individual & Production Pastries: Tarts

Tarts are anything that has a cookie-like bottom, and topped with a filling. What I’ve found with the classes at The Culinary Institute of America, is that they build off each other. In Basic & Classical Cakes we made various tarts, some filled with ganache, lemon curd, fruit, frangipane, the list goes on! In Individual & Production Pastries, we kick the attention to detail up a notch and bring…

Individual & Production Pastries: Layer Cake

The next three-week block was Individual & Production Pastries, in this class the focus is on both quality and quantity. The pace of this class is very fast in order to produce and plate individual portions of dessert. We go deeper into previous class knowledge about what makes ganache break, the standard ratio of gelatin in a mirror glaze, why we glaze fruit on tarts, and how to make our own…

The Baking & Pastry Second Term Practical was talked up quite a bit at The Culinary Institute of America. This was the exam that can make or break your time here. I was a little nervous for it just because it was talked up so much. I took a deep breath, made my timeline, and reminded myself that this was an opportunity to show the skills that I’ve cultivated. The Practical occurs over two days,…

Basic & Classical Cakes: Part IV

The Dobos torte is a decadent cake consisting of five or seven light layers of Dobos sponge cake filled with mocha butter cream, and topped with a crisp caramel coated Dobos layer. Traditionally the torte has five layers, and the layers must not be cut from a cake, but baked individually. The caramel covered wedges were then dipped in dark chocolate, accenting the edges of the cake. The Dobos…

Basic & Classical Cakes: Part V

Classical cakes are not just outdated cakes that were “a big deal” in the past, in fact they are the basis in which novel cakes are built upon (hint: that was a question on our final exam). Pictured here is the Opera cake. Gaston LeNotre was a French pastry chef who gave life to traditionally heavy French pastries by making them more desirable and lighter in flavour. Among his accomplishments, a…