Not every club or resort has an in-house pastry chef dedicated to preparing desserts. But that’s not stopping many properties from turning out treats that finish à la carte and banquet meals with a special flair.
If you want a meal to be truly unforgettable, a well-crafted dessert can provide the sweetest of memories. At both formal and casual meals, whether à la carte or banquets, dessert is often the takeaway taste that defines the experience.
SUMMING IT UP • Customize trendy techniques and flavor profiles in your desserts. • Elevate seasonal fruits in dessert presentations. • Don’t forget the garnish, which offers opportunities to introduce a whole new round of sweet treats to the plate. • When it comes to dessert, tradition can still sell especially well. |
Gerard Clinton, Executive Chef of Aspetuck Valley Country Club in Weston, Conn., doesn’t have a pastry chef, but he is still always looking for ways “to push the envelope” in keeping his desserts creative and seasonal.
“My time is limited, but with the use of modern-day concepts, equipment and ingredients, I am able to achieve this,” he says.
For one farm-to-table fundraising event with 100-plus guests, Clinton used his ice cream maker and Cryovac machine to make local maple ice cream with compressed watermelon and ground cherries.
“The [ice cream maker] turns out a frozen base in minutes, allowing me to produce ice creams and sorbets right before service,” he says. “Nothing is better than soft-textured ice cream; our members like it so much, we make at least seven to eight different seasonal flavors that rotate each week.”
Clinton uses a cryovac machine to compress fruits and vegetables to change their texture and infuse different flavors into them. As the machine extracts the air from the fruit, it absorbs the flavor of the liquid in the bag.
“The result is a piece of fruit that is somewhat crunchy and full of flavor—it’s awesome,” he says.
In some desserts, Clinton uses all-natural thickening, gelling, emulsion and clarifying agents called hydrocolloids, in place of gelatin or eggs, to save time and steps.
A simple, yet stunning dessert that he makes using agar-agar, an algae-derived ingredient, is the “Candy Bar.” For this, dark chocolate, almost like a ganache, is mixed with the agar-agar until it is set. The chocolate is then cut to resemble a candy bar, and garnished either with something crunchy, such as cornflakes coated with chocolate, or something light like coconut “snow”—a fluffy powder made by spinning (in a Robot Coupe) coconut oil, 10X sugar and maltodextrin, a starch made from grain (usually corn).
“When it hits the palate, it dissipates like snow,” Clinton says.
Hydrocolloids also allow Clinton to make crème brûlée in half the time without using eggs, baking or cooling to set up. It comes out with the same velvety texture associated with the traditional version, and also makes a silky pie or tart filling.
Mind-Blowing Flavors
To elevate seasonal fruits into unique desserts, Andy Antico, Executive Chef of The Mayfield Sand Ridge Club in South Euclid, Ohio, also infuses additional flavors by using a Cryovac. With this equipment and technique, he has created such combinations as canary melon infused with vanilla and honey. And to go with a margarita mousse, he has infused compressed watermelon with tequila, and topped it off with candied lime.
“It increases the flavor three-fold,” he says. “It blows the members’ minds.”
Hot Stuff Being located in the Southwest close to Mexico, members and guests at the Odessa (Texas) Country Club tend to like their desserts with a little kick. So when there’s a chocolate dessert on the menu, chances are it might be spiked with chiles. Chocolate and chiles go together well in a number of desserts, Executive Chef Mike Galvan explains. One favorite at the club is the flourless chocolate cake with chiles. “I like to use ancho chiles for their spicy, raisin taste, and guajillo peppers for their complex flavors,” Galvan says. The trend has found its way north, too. Andy Antico, Executive Chef of The Mayfield Sand Ridge Club in South Euclid, Ohio, has also added chile threads to brownies. “It just adds a little bit of a cayenne pepper flavor—not too much, but just something a little different,” he says. |
Nobody gets bored with dessert at The Mayfield Sand Ridge, Antico says—not the members, or the staff.
“We’re always doing different things, and some of it is pretty much off the wall,” he says. “As long as we have some of our traditional offerings for those who want them, our members are happy to try something new.”
At an action station, Antico uses liquid nitrogen to instantly turn custard into ice cream or sorbet. He can make any flavor (including popcorn), and the smoke produced by the liquid nitrogen at the station “has everybody oohing and aahing.”For another dessert, he has smoked chocolate pots de crème with pecan chips.
Simpler Solutions
But not every dessert that can bring special touches to club and resort menus requires fancy equipment or cutting-edge ingredients.
At Aspetuck Valley CC, classic chocolate cookie dough does quadruple duty as the soft and gooey base for sundaes with just-made ice cream, and as the crust for pies, individual tarts or dessert pizzas, filled or topped with seasonal ingredients such as cherries. Mark Mathurin, Executive Chef of Nashawtuc Country Club in Concord, Mass., also bakes cookie dough in individual cast-iron skillets and serves it warm with ice cream and whipped cream.
Clinton sees the process of fermentation and the combining of sweet and sour flavors as up-and-coming trends in both savory foods and desserts. He makes a ricotta cheesecake using the fermentation process, to separate sheep’s milk into curds by adding lemon, then adding eggs, flour, sugar and gelatin to the resulting cheese. As the mixture bakes slowly in a bain marie, a moist cheesecake forms on the bottom and a layer of sweet-tart lemon gel rises to the top.
The éclair is another long-favored dessert that is getting renewed spotlight time on American dessert menus. As a change from the traditional pastry cream or custard, Clinton fills his pâte à choux shells with different flavored mousses. For a “knife and fork dessert,” he cooks cherries down in a simple syrup, and fills the shell with the confit cherries and chocolate mousse.
Some of The Mayfield Sand Ridge Club’s desserts are so near and dear to members that they have been on the menu for as long as 35 years, Antico reports. One is the Bunker Porch Pie, a combination of Bordeaux cookies, vanilla and chocolate ice cream, caramel and Heath Bar crumbles.
Ladies coming in after golf like the lemon curd cake with meringue, he adds. For this dessert, the bottom and sides of a springform pan are lined with sponge cake, which is then topped with vanilla ice cream and lemon curd, and finished with a torched Italian meringue.
Bringing Soufflés to the Table
Both Clinton and Michael Galvan, Executive Chef of Odessa (Texas) Country Club, are bringing back tableside-presented soufflés. Clinton, who explains that the soufflés “pretty much sell themselves,” likes to play with popular flavors such as peanut butter and chocolate. One of Galvan’s specialties is an ancho chile spiced chocolate soufflé.
According to restaurant industry gurus, pies are back on the rise in restaurants. But they have always been extremely popular at Odessa CC. One favorite is a traditional Southern buttermilk chess pie. Galvan sometimes puts his own personal spin on this classic by making it with Meyer lemons and adding cornmeal to the lemon mixture for some added texture.
Crème brûlée is also often on the menu at Odessa CC. The club’s members like a Southwestern twist, so Galvan gives it to them by using ingredients such as prickly pear, tamarind and blood orange. He uses a combi oven to bake both his crème brûlée and his soufflés.
As an alternative to pies at Nashawtuc CC, Mathurin uses seasonal, local fruits to make cobblers and crisps, which he usually prepares in individual soup cups or ramekins. The cobblers are par-baked and heated to order. To save time on making crisps, he makes the streusel in large batches, to last a week or so in the refrigerator.
Mathurin also uses fresh fruits to infuse into panna cotta. “Our members particularly liked a raspberry panna cotta with a pineapple vanilla compote that we made,” he says. “Panna cotta is a pretty dessert, and needs only a tuile or almond madeleine to complete the presentation.”
They also like homestyle, comfort-food desserts, such as rice and bread puddings. For Valentine’s Day, Mathurin made a double-chocolate bread pudding. He has also made the pudding with caramelized apples and flaming Calvados, and with chocolate chips and toasted hazelnuts.
The secret to making a great bread pudding that has a crispy outside and creamy middle, Mathurin says, is to dice the bread very small, so it gets very crunchy. Then he lets it sit in the custard, to soak until it’s thoroughly saturated. He cuts the pudding out with a ring mold, and warms it to-order.
For banquet and other special-occasion action stations, Mathurin breaks out the Fryolator and turns out doughnuts or beignets while guests watch. He is also considering purchasing a churro gun.
Recipes:
Ancho Chili Spiced Chocolate Soufflés
Banana Cream Napoleon
Shared Red Velvet “Twinkie” and Chocolate Mousse Dessert
Vanilla Bean Arborio Rice Pudding
“Separated” Meyer Lemon Ricotta Cheesecake
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.