Chocolates à la Carte

In all of his wildest of dreams, Mohan DeSilva would not have pictured himself as the executive pastry chef of the mammoth 1,877 room New York Marriot Marquis Hotel when he was growing up in Sri Lanka. Rather, he had thoughts of becoming an engineer. Now as the pastry chef of such a large hotel with a staff of seven bakers, DeSilva almost has to be an engineer to figure out how to produce large quantities of premium quality baked pastries and desserts on a constant basis. He has spent the past five years at the hotel perfecting this skills.

Whether for a banquet of 100 or 2,500, DeSilva likes to create desserts that are "simple and elegant." " I sit back and think about how I can take a simple dessert idea and develop it into something sensational that people will remember when they leave the meal," says DeSilva. "I use designs from Chocolates à la Carte to make the dessert special and to personalize it to fit the needs of the customers."

One of his most popular desserts is the "Big Apple." He paints a big apple on the plate with cinnamon caramel sauce. On one side of the plate, he places an apple fan with almond ice cream that is glazed with Calvedos sauce. On another part of the plate, is a dark chocolate nest from Chocolates à la Carte that contains apple praline ice cream. "We prepare the plates in advance and then drop in the ice cream at the last minute," says DeSilva. " Guests love it...it is a beautiful combination of textures and flavors."

Since the hotel does such a large banquet business, DeSilva likes to use a variety of designs from Chocolates à la Carte. Using them helps him to save labor and they provide him with an infinite number of dessert possibilities. To complement the rich chocolate designs, he uses light natural sauces and fresh fruits. His favorite fruits are raspberries, passion fruit, mangos and strawberries. For fillings, he prefers to use ice cream and frozen souffles. He recently developed a Tiramisu filling and is going to start experimenting with frozen yogurt.

DeSilva works closely with the hotel's catering department to keep coming up with new ideas for banquet desserts. " I meet every month with the catering sales staff to get their feedback on new desserts," state DeSilva. " We keep trying to top former creations. I believe this evolution and constant change keeps us ahead of the competition."

Additionally to keep the creative juices working, DeSilva was a member of the 1992 New York Regional Culinary Olympic Team that competed in Frankfurt, Germany. In his first-ever international culinary competition, he won two silver medals. In the future, he plans on trying out for the 1996 national culinary team.

Of the thousands of dessert creations he has produced at the hotel, he believes his biggest accomplishment was for a Christmas party a few years ago for a major Japanese electronic company. With the help of Chocolates à la Carte, he developed three different holiday theme plates. Not only did his staff plate up three different designs, but the servers had to alternate the plates so that each person at the events was surrounded by two other plate designs. Not bad for a party with 2,000 people!

Another time, a benefit for a children's charity had an Arabian Nights theme and the customer wanted a snake charmer to be part of the dessert. With the assistance of Chocolates à la Carte, DeSilva designed a dessert that featured a chocolate snake charmer with marzipan snake coming out of a chocolate wicker basket. It was served with white chocolate mousse with mango sauce and was garnished with berries. Needless to say, the 1,200 people that attended the event was impressed.

When creating unusual desserts, DeSilva recommends that chefs think about what they can do that is simple, appealing to the eyes, easy to understand and something that people would love to taste! This is pretty sensible advice from the pastry chef who wanted to be an engineer.