Desserts at The UK's BEST 5 Star Hotel: A Day in the Life of a Pastry Chef at Claridge’s

Hello, my name is Beatrice. I'm a pastry sous-chef at Claridge's and I will show you a day in the life of a pastry chef. So one of the first things I do when I arrive to Claridge's is to have a gather around with the team. Guys, can we gather around for the meeting, please? Come, come, come, don't be shy. Morning, everyone. So today we have 22 for lunch, 162 for the afternoon tea, 26 for dinner. On the banqueting side, it's just the sweet bites today, not a very busy day for us. Rodica, breakfast is going okay? Busy? Okay, very good. Chef, you have anything to add? No, as you said, we are a bit short on stuff today, but we work together on the joint piece and we keep it tidy. Yes, chef. We share. Thank you. So we separate the kitchen in sections. This section here is where the banqueting team works normally and where Juliette right now, she's working on the art cafe. Then over here, we have the afternoon tea. They are very busy with setup right now because everything needs to be ready and plated at 2.30 and everything is made fresh every day. Then here we have the breakfast service and the team, the service team, they will start later because they have to work until 11 o'clock, but they work from here and the service goes from the pass, the window to the world, as I like to call it. Then here we have Jacob, he's preparing all the amenities for the day. So all the welcome treats we give to the guests when they arrive. The cookie stack is one of my favorites because it's been in Claridge's forever and we have a lot of guests that come and they actually want the cookie stack take away. Shall I crack? I go? Et voilà. This is a moist, nice cookie. All the guests love these cookies and I love these cookies as well. Another of my favorite amenities, well actually Jacob, what's your favorite amenity? I like the kids' MMX. It's like a cake pop covered in sprinkles. It's very yummy. Let's eat just a little treat from the kids. As we were doing the amenities, the orders for the breakfast start to come in, so we will just, we just got an order for a Claridge's waffle, which is one of my favorite breakfast dishes. First we have this very special customized waffle machine that has the Claridge's logo on it, which is cool, and the waffles are delicious. We put it on the plate, we do some berries on the side. All the dishes we serve, we poke one of the shakes and we send one shake for the front of us, just finish with some icing sugar on the top, and that's it. Our special Claridge's waffle. So we're gonna start the setup for the service lunch. As we finish the breakfast, it's time to get our desserts on the way. Sorry. Sai, you ready soon to dip the celebration cakes? Are you ready soon? Yeah? Three minutes? That's perfect. This is not part of one of the four that we serve for afternoon tea, but if the guest is coming for celebrating an anniversary or, I don't know, a special mark on their life, we will give this little small cheesecake. Do you want me to introduce you first? So, Emilien is another of my fellow sous-chefs. He's a sous-chef for the art cafe and the breakfast section. So I need to write one dessert plate for the foyer, for the customer. The best chocolate writing Monde has ever seen. We're gonna plate up. It's the chocolate and hazelnut dome. We start with the chocolate granule. So it's a chocolate chip cookie. Caramelized hazelnut pieces, and a bit of brown as well. Hazelnut praline mixed with florentine. Florentine is like a crispy flake. Just like that. A big scoop of caramel ice cream. To finish, chocolate dome that we cast. We empty it to a thin, thin layer like this, and then we finish with some nibs hazelnuts. We place it in the middle. So we pour the chocolate sauce onto the dome in order for it to melt and wow the guests. So now we're gonna serve one of our millefeuille. It's our most popular dessert and my personal favorite from the menu. Quite simple but lovely. So we have a puff pastry here, caramelized. This is a vanilla crème diplomate, which is a basically a crème pâtissière mixed with a whipping cream, whipped cream. Then the second layer, caramel sauce. You stick it on the plates just so it's easier to serve. I don't know, it just gives me the feeling of home comfort. It's just a classic dessert, but sometimes the classic ones are like the ones that bring us back memories and I don't know, just the comfort of it. I love it. So we do two lines of crème diplomate. We go with more caramel sauce. A big dot on the side, because we call it vanilla and caramel millefeuille, the Arlette. This is puff pastry cut in the other side, so it opens up and makes this special effect. And some vanilla powder. The vanilla powder, we make it at home. It feels like home. We make it in Claridge's as well. We use the vanilla pods that we are ready to put the seeds out. We dry them in the oven and then we blend it. That way we take the full use of the vanilla. And there we go. My favorite and the most popular desserts at Claridge's. Bonjour, how are you? I'm okay, thank you. So Lynn, the other sous-chef in the pastry. She's the sous-chef for the afternoon tea, so she's the creative mind behind the afternoon tea that we're going to show you now. Lemon and mirabelle cake. We will do it with the link. We do a little hole on the cake. And then we pipe our mirabelle jam in the center. Then we have a mirabelle gel. We put it in the center as well. And then we have our vanilla whipped ganache that we pipe around. As sous-chefs, we started to work together like a year and a half ago. A year and a half ago. And yeah, so as each sous-chef is responsible for one section, we do share and we do a lot of brainstorming together. When we design our menus for our own section, we usually ask for each other's feedback and that will help us to create our menu, just to make it better. Yes, and then for a mirabelle cake, we just finish it off with some fresh lime zest and that's it. So we start this one with a fig jam. So we pipe a little bit at the bottom. Then we have our oat dacquoise. Fresh figs to finish. My favorite one is this one, I think. I love figs. Yes, I think mine is definitely the mirabelle and lemon cake. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, I really like mirabelle plum. So we finish off with this crumb. So it's our cereal crumb. Inside we have oats, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and red quinoa. Okay, thank you. Look, can I go home? I don't need to. You guys are doing the afternoon tea for me. Well, two pieces. So what we're going to build now is a chocolate and hazelnut Saint-Honoré. So what I have in my hand is a piping bag with a chocolate crème pâte. We make a hole in it. So we do the hole, we dust some cocoa powder on top. We fill up the hole that we did previously with the hazelnut praline. Then we fill up the shoe as well with the same praline. After the shoe is filled with the hazelnut praline, we will dip it in the chocolate glaze. Like that. Take the excess out and then we will place it on top of the Saint-Honoré. This we do every single day, around 200. It depends. Basically, if we have 200 guests coming for afternoon tea, we will do around 220. The last step to finish this pastry is to put five pieces of hazelnuts into the sides. The last one I will show you how to finish is the pear and ginger mousse. So here is a pear mousse with the inserts of diced pear and ginger gel. After we dip it, we will finish with the poached pear and ginger syrup. This in the morning is spread on the trays and then we freeze it so we can cut it and then we cut it with the disk. And to finish with some candied ginger and gold leaf. Okay, around 2.30 it's time to plate up the afternoon tea service. So we start with as many plates as we can, but we have to do this repeatedly during the service, like four or five times. So we start with the chocolate and hazelnut Saint-Honoré, then the pear and ginger mousse, the fig tart, and the mirabelle cake. And this will be presented to the guests like this. So we use it more as a chocolate storage room. Then we have the Clary G Steady Bear as well that we sell in the Art Café as well. This is the final product. It also goes with a hammer because there's smarties inside. It's cool for the kids, but even me as an adult, I would love to get one of these just to eat the chocolate. Yeah, we have these little sticks here. They have the Clary G's log as well. We serve it as a hot chocolate in the Art Café. So the goal is like an interactive hot chocolate. The guests will dip it in the hot milk and they will stir it until the chocolate is melted and they have the hot chocolate, which is, I think, quite a cool, simple, but cool. Now we will do a small tasting for the Chef Thibault for our festive menu. This is a big pressure for me because he's about to try the festive menu for the banqueting and then he's going to give me some notes and we will work on whatever notes he has to give the moment I find out if I lose my job. This inside is an orange spiced marmalade and orange ganache with a vanilla sponge and a crunchy base. And then my plan is to do a vanilla-based ice cream with spices, so winter spiced ice cream. With citrus as well, no? It says citrus, but it says citrus like separate from the ice cream. So if you want, I can do orange. Orange? Yeah, I was planning to do without orange ice cream because this is already quite strong on orange. No? Okay. For me, it's strong in spice, right? Yes, I know, I know. I figured you would say so. It's going to be a quick fix. Okay, in that case, I will do a small batch of orange ganache today. So tomorrow we can finish it. Yeah, with the sorbet as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, all right. Thank you. This one, keep this one. I'll keep this one, yeah. Yeah, just in case. Thank you. Thanks for watching. Make sure to like and subscribe to the Stalker team. And click here for more videos like this.