Passionate About Dessert
I used to make what was our best dessert, which was a hot fudge ice cream cake. It was basically a pound cake. We’d cut the piece of cake in half – it was about three by three inches square – and we’d put a square block of ice cream next to the lower level of the cake, and then we put the other piece of the cake on top and covered the top with hot fudge. Then we put a cherry and a big dollop of whipped cream on the top. You had to be very careful when you put the hot fudge on the cake to leave a hole in the center of the top piece of cake so the whipped cream would stay on the cake and the cherry would stay on the whipped cream, otherwise it would just slide off if it was covered with hot fudge.
Anyway, it was a fabulous dessert and we sold a lot of them. They were hard to make, but I ate a few of those myself.
Earlier this summer, one of our hotels, the JW Marriott Desert Ridge in Arizona, hosted an event that fans of sweets, like me, would love – it was called the World Pastry Awards. Top pastry teams from countries around the world like Denmark, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Singapore and South Korea came to our hotel to take part in this competition. The U.S. was represented by our current national champions, who just happen to be the pastry team at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge.
The competition required the participants to make a sugar showpiece, a chocolate showpiece, a cake, a frozen dessert, three types of chocolate bonbons, three small cakes, a plated dessert and a chef’s special creation. All of these pastries were then evaluated by three panels of judges for quality of the creation, taste and artistic beauty. Being one of the judges who gets to taste these creations sounds like real a dream job to me!
After the two day competition was over, the judges awarded gold, silver and bronze medals to the top competitors and I’m proud to share with you that our JW Marriott Desert Ridge team came in third place, taking the bronze. With the third best pastry team in the world working there, I’m definitely going to have to pay a visit to that hotel sometime soon!
I know there are a lot of people out there with a sweet tooth just like me. I’d love to hear what your favorite desserts are, so please leave a comment and share them with me.
I’m Bill Marriott and thanks for helping me keep Marriott on the move.
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