2013 - May 4, Mochi and Friends Dessert Cafe

From ATS Wiki

Contents 1 Event Captains 2 Event Description 3 Attendance 4 Menu 4.1 Desserts 4.2 Drinks 5 Decorations and Venue 6 Entertainment 7 Other Notes

Event Captains

• Norman and Kim

Event Description

The aim of Mochi and Friends was to create a classy dessert cafe environment where people could enjoy fancy desserts, socialize, and meet the ATS exec. The actual event featured several deserts and drinks: sushi mochi, green tea cheesecake, egg/fruit tarts, Emily (fruit custard) tarts, shaved ice, milk tea, aloe juice, and mixed fruit drinks. Guests could attend the event for free, but they were limited to 3 servings of dessert/drinks each, or 4 if they attended with a big or little. Milk tea was considered "free". Entertainment included karaoke, mahjong, and Bang!

Links to Planning docs:

• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qjBiqSxeWQUTO9nVny9qIkVNzX42kcEGe3vZfgluhXc/edit
• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuxZHqQwNQnwdGhObTdiVXBadWktVEFLb205VjFqUXc#gid=0

Attendance

Estimated attendance was around 100 persons.

Menu

Desserts

Sushi Mochi

• We made approx. 150 servings of mochi
• The sushi fish were made from sliced strawberries, sliced canned pineapple rings, and halves of canned lychees
• Materials:
  • 4 bags of glutinous rice flour
  • 2 bags of potato starch (leftover from S2T)
  • Sugar
  • 2 cans of red bean (leftover from S2T)
  • 2 large boxes of strawberries (some were used for Emily tarts)
  • 2 cans of pineapple rings
  • 2/3 cans of whole lychees
  • canned mandarin oranges (unused)

Green Tea Cheesecake

• Recipe was used from http://dessertfirstgirl.com/2009/08/green-tea-cheesecake.html
• Chocolate teddy grahams were used to replace the chocolate wafer cookie in the crust, which worked as an excellent substitution.
• The resulting taste was pretty good, but the cheesecake's texture was fairly light, similar to mousse. This may have been because overnight refrigeration wasn't quite long enough.
• We used 7x7 square chafing dishes to make 5 cheesecakes, and lined the trays with parchment paper. Each cake was cut into 16 pieces.
• The squares were decorated with whipped cream and toped with a mint leaf.

Egg/Fruit Tarts

• We ordered 45 mini egg tarts and 45 mini fruit tarts from Bao Bao Bakery and picked them up on the day of.

Shaved Ice

• Most of the ingredients were already available from S2T, so we only needed to purchase extra coconut jellies and condensed milk.

Emily Fruit Tarts

• Emily used leftover baking materials from the cheesecake and the leftover strawberries to make mini custard fruit tarts.

Drinks

Milk Tea

• 2 pots of milk tea, with the usual recipe (60 bags of tea and 2 cans of condensed milk each)
• Ran out fairly slowly

Aloe Juice

• A couple bottles of aloe

Arbitrary Kim Fruit Drink (Mocktail)

• Ingredients: Pineapple juice, seltzer water, limeade, cherry-pomegranate grenadine, sugar, ice, mint leaves
• Fill the cup halfway with ice, pour a equal measures of pineapple juice, limeade, and seltzer. Mix the grenadine with a little bit of sugar to make the syrup thicker, and carefully pour a small amount into the glass, so that the red syrup sinks to the bottom instead of mixing with the drink. Add a mint leaf on top as decoration.
• The point of the drink is pretty much to look good, so you should make it in a clear cup

Decorations and Venue

The event was held at McCormick country kitchen on Saturday, May 4th from 8-10.

Decor included:

• The large Taiwan flag as a banner on the back wall
• Leftover white tablecloths from S2T were used to cover the tables
• The vases from Lunar New Year were placed on tables and filled with pocky
• Steph Yu worked on stringing lanterns with tea lights from the kitchen area to the emergency exit, and making leveled cardboard dessert display stands, which were covered in the red tablecloths from LNY
• Each table had printed menus
• Each exec member had a unique food nametag

Entertainment

Karaoke was set up in the corner near the couches, with a projector, speakers, and a couple of microphones. It was fairly popular throughout the night and made the event quite lively.

Mahjong and Bang were also left in a corner for people to play. A couple groups did play mahjong.

Other Notes

Budget

• The event was fully funded at $350. The money was spent on food, drinks, and plates/utensils, with approximately $80 leftover. The budget breakdown is as follows:
  • Square Plastic Plates - $50
  • Clear Plastic Cups - $23
  • Bao Bao Fruit/Egg Tarts - $50
  • Shaws - $70???
  • Cmart - ????
  • Lotte (Matcha Powder) - $12

Publicity

• The original estimated and target audience size was around 40 people. Due to the large number of end of semester events, we decided to pub harder to make up for lost attendance, and had quite a large turnout.
• Postering locations were the Infinite, Student Center, several dorms (including McCormick, Maseeh, Next, and East Campus), Stata, and Building 66.
• Several emails were sent to the ats mailing list, and another dorm-wide email was sent the morning of the event.
• We also created a facebook event page.

Prep

• Shopping was done the day before, and prep for the cheesecake was completed that evening, which took around 2-3 hours. We also started making around 40 or so of the mochi.
• Prep on the day of started at 4. Tasks included finishing the mochi+fruit toppings, decorating the country kitchen, setting up the tables, setting up karaoke, and making signs/menus. Preparation probably did not need to start that early, although much of exec was not able to come, so we ended up working until the start of the event.

Serving Sizes

• Mochi: 3 pieces
• Cheesecake: 1 square (7in x 7in was cut into 16 pieces)
• 1 egg tart or 1 fruit tart
• 1 emily tart
• 1 shaved ice
• 1 cup of aloe
• 1 mocktail
• UNLIMITED MILK TEA

Layout, Crowd Control, and Seating

• Desserts were served at the entrance. They were laid out on a table blocking entry to the kitchen, and exec members monitored the desserts. There was a display of the desserts on the other side of the entrance, and Tiffany explained the serving process and gave out stamp cards.
• The wave of attendees was varying, but limiting each person to one dessert at a time and having one person dedicated to stamping cards helped expedite the process.
• The seating was limited to 6 tables + the side couches. Some people stood/were doing karaoke, and some guests who couldn't find seats took their desserts to go.