Dessert Trials

The past few weeks have been super busy!!  The best part was trying out some brand new desserts!  A good friend of mine is going on a mission trip this summer and decided to auction off his awesome chef skills to raise some money for the trip.  Six course dinner for a good cause anyone?

Well, it's been a while since the two of us were in the kitchen together.  So I couldn't resist offering up my services to throw down some yummy dessert.  Four desserts went head to head to see which one would win out.  Thanks to some lovely family and friends who were kind enough to lend me their taste buds, we narrowed it down to the chosen one!  Here they are:

"Nutty Banana" - Brown butter cake, caramelized banana, rum ice cream and candied peanuts

 

"Samoa" - Chocolate cake, toasted marshmallow, chocolate tuile, caramel ice cream, toasted coconut 

 



 "Oh, Honey" - Cornmeal almond cake, almond bark, citrus lime crisp, honey ice cream, candied citrus zest

 

AND THE WINNER IS...

 

"Chocolate Covered Cherry" - Chocolate mousse and caramel jelly cake, cherry port compote, almond financier, sour cream ice cream, port reduction

Can't wait to see what the guests think of the dessert.  I hope they have just as much fun eating it as I did making it!!

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Saying Goodbye to Le Cap d'Agde

Since deciding to take the Paris patisserie up on it's offer to intern there for almost a month, it was time to head back to Le Cap d'Agde, finish out one last week of classes, pack up and say goodbye.  I was pretty excited that this week was plated desserts, my favorite...and even more excited when I found out we were playing with molecular gastronomy.   The combination made for some pretty amazing results!  Since each plate is made up of several different recipes, this time I'm going to give you the recipe for my favorite element of each dessert.  Think of it as a starting place...and you can always ask for more!

Pomme, pomme, pomme....

Apples as far as the eye can see!  The dessert was, technically, the simplest of the week and yet the most time consuming.  See those itty bitty squares on the plate?  Those are small cubes of apple cider jelly.  They started as large squares, cut very small that then had to be carefully separated.  They were very delicate and only the perfect squares could be kept for plating sake.  It took 4 people almost 3 hours to complete this task.  Good thing they were pretty!

Best part of this dessert?  The apple chips!  I could make these and eat them all day as a snack.  In fact, none of the "scraps" went to waste.  We ate them all!

Apple Chips
granny smith apples
powdered sugar
non stick silpat
butter spray

1- Slice the apples very thin.  It helps this process to have a mandolin.  You want to almost be able to see through the slices.
2- Spray your silpat with butter spray and put on a sheet tray.  If you don't have a silpat, well buttered parchment paper should do the job.
3- Line the apple slices on the silpat.  You can put them as close as you want, just make sure they don't touch.
4- Sift powdered sugar over top so the apples are lightly covered.
5- "Dry" out in oven at 160-180 degrees Celsius until apples are slightly wrinkled and crisp.
I didn't put any measurements in the recipe since it depends on how much you want to make.  If I had to guess, I would say you could get 40-50 chips out of one apple if you slice them thin enough.

Cremeux Au Chocolat 

As far as combination of flavors goes, this was my favorite dessert for the week.  Inside that chocolate tower are layers of toasted lime rice krispies, banana and crème brulee cream.  Top it all off with Bailey's ice cream and it's a dessert you can't go wrong with.  The only thing I would change is the amount of chocolate mousse we put around the plate.  It really masked the other flavors for me and became more chocolate than a balanced dessert.  This was not a problem for the chocolate lovers in the class...and after all, dessert is all a matter of personal taste.

Favorite element here?  Bailey's ice cream...hands...down!

Bailey's Ice Cream
*Note - Due to when the Bailey's is added in this recipe, it still has it's full alcohol content.  It's not enough to matter...but still something to mention
1036 g whole milk
450 g cream
280 g egg yolks
250 g sugar
6 g ice cream stabilizer (it can be made without this element, just won't keep as long)
360 g Bailey's

1- In a saucepan, combine milk and cream.  Warm to almost boiling.  Add in half the sugar and the stabilizer, if using.  Mix well.
2- In a small bowl, mix yolks and remaining sugar.
3- When milk mixture comes to a boil, add half of the hot mixture to the yolks.  Stir well.  Return everything to the heat at cook to 83 degrees Celsius. 
4- Remove from heat and put into a bowl.  Cool mixture down quickly by putting in the freezer or over an ice bath.  Once mixture has cooled, add the Bailey's and blend in an ice cream maker according to the directions.

Last but definitely no least...my favorite of the week...

Declinaison Autour De La Mandarine

This was such a fun plate to play with and the flavors of the dessert were light and refreshing!  It was my favorite by far and one I intend on making for family and friends when I return home.  Whose coming for dessert???

Coolest thing on this plate?  The mandarin spaghetti!!  That's right, that lovely curved line running through the middle of the plate is mandarin spaghetti!  If you ever have an opportunity to play with molecular gastronomy, this is a good place to start.  It's one of the "easiest" and coolest techniques I've seen and can be done with any pulp you wish!

Agar Agar Spaghetti
250 g frozen mandarin pulp (or any pulp you like)
2.5 g agar agar
2.5 g gelatin powder (prepared according to package directions)

1- Melt pulp over medium heat.  Add agar agar and gelatin powder.  Bring to a boil and remove from heat.
2- Pipe mixture into small plastic tubes (these can be found in hardware stores).  Make sure they are as full as possible without any air bubbles.  Allow tubes to set in ice water.
3- Once set, carefully remove spaghetti from the tube.  You can do this by carefully blowing air into the tubes, using canned air or blowing yourself.

Aside from desserts this week, I had to say goodbye to some pretty cool people.  Hopefully, our paths will cross again one day but I enjoyed getting to know each and every one of them!

Now to get all our stuff to Paris...

 

Playing with Plates

This past week in patisserie, we worked on plated desserts.  I was super excited since this is the main reason I wanted to get into pastry in the first place.  Putting elements together on a plate that may seem odd at first, making the plate look like a work of modern art and presenting something absolutely delightful.  Chef is always telling us to “give your best to the guest”.  And this week, even more than before, I was ready. 

 First up…Moelleux Noix de Coco, Coeur Coulant Mangue et Glace Gingembre

Beautiful and oh so scrumptious!  So what you have there in the glass is a coconut biscuit.  Before cooking, we hid a frozen sphere of mango sorbet in the middle of the batter, so when you bite into it you get a gooey mango surprise.  Surprises in the middle of desserts is my new found obsession since reading the book Spiced in which the pastry chef who wrote the book loves to hide little bits of heaven for her guests to discover.  I will definitely be playing with that soon!  We also placed small edible flowers on the top to give the cake a pop of color.

That gorgeous honey colored swirl coming off the cake and down to the plate is a coconut thin.  For those in the culinary world, it’s really nothing more than a tuile cookie made with coconut.  But it will make you look at tuiles in a completely different light and have you flavoring yours from now on!

Underneath the thin is a perfect cornelle of ginger ice cream.  I wish I could take credit for the immaculate shaping of this ice cream, but to save time, Chef did all of our ice cream scoops for the week.  He does it with one large spoon off the side of the container.  I must practice that!  Those of you who know me and my love for all flavors Asian, know this ice cream was right up my alley.  Perfect compliment to the cake and mango.  I will be making this again!  Also, hidden underneath the ice cream is a small and simple sable cookie topped with peanuts.  We used these cookies in all our desserts to keep the ice cream from melting into a puddle on the plate.  I was surprised at how long the ice cream actually stayed solid.

The garnishes on the plate consist of artistic swoops and dots of mango coulis, a small dusting of cocoa powder and a thin line of coconut flakes on the edge of the plate.  I wish I could find the words to describe the taste of this dish, but none seem to do it justice.  This would be my favorite dessert of the week.

Dessert #2…Mariage Carotte et Manque, un Soupcon de Noisette

 

I have to admit, I was very skeptical about this dessert when first discussed.  After all, pairing carrot and mango weren’t exactly two flavors I ever thought would go together.  However, I was presently surprised by the combination.

The squares on the plate are made of hazelnut daiquoise, an air leavened light cake.  On top of the cake is piped lines of sweet carrot cream.  Alternating circles of candied carrot and mango top the cream and a small square of carrot thin is placed in the corners.  I found that the carrot thin was a bit too sticky and got stuck in your teeth easily, so perhaps it stayed out at room temperature too long and took on too much humidity before plating.

The large circles on the plate are a reduction of carrot juice and sugar, while the small circles are mango coulis we had left over from the previous dessert.  The sorbet for this dish was mango carrot.  This made the dish for me.  I could have eaten a whole bowl of just the sorbet.  The sweetness of the mango paired with just a hint of carrot was an amazingly refreshing combination.  And, of course, our sable cookie kept it from melting into a pile of goo.

Last plated dessert…Arlettes aux Poires, Crème Brulee Vanille Bourbon, Eclats de Marrons Confit et Glace a L’Huile D’Olive du Domaine Lagarance

 

Aesthetically speaking, I thought this was the most interesting looking dessert of the week.  However, I found the syrupiness a little overwhelming for me, and I couldn’t finish it.  The juice of the pears seemed to dominate the rest of the elements.  Still, the half that I was able to eat was yummy.

The main part of the dessert is layer upon layer of all kinds of goodness.  The base is an arlette, or a piece of puff pastry rolled very thin, dredged in powdered sugar and baked until crunchy.  These were divine even on their own.  The outer edges of the base arlette were lined with pear rounds which had been caramelized in brown sugar.  In the middle of the pears was placed a thin line of frozen crème brulee.  A confit of chopped chestnuts was placed on either side of the crème brulee and then a layer of sweet vanilla cream was piped to fill in all the gaps.  This was topped with another arlette and the same layering as the base, but without the crème brulee this time.  Finally, the dessert was topped with a final arlette, a thin line of powdered sugar, dollop of sweet vanilla cream and a half a chestnut.

The ice cream on this plate was an olive oil ice cream.  This was my favorite part of the dessert.  The olive oil gave the ice cream a dimension I’d never really experienced before.  It really got me excited about experimenting with ice creams when I get back home.  

Also on the plate were thin lines of pear coulis outlining the dessert, a small dab of cocoa powder and (of course) our sable cookie resting under the ice cream.

One more thing…The Game

So by Thursday, we had completed all the desserts above.  This gave us Friday with an “open day”.  Chef told us on Thursday that he was planning a game for us on Friday, so I went into class with much anticipation about what he had in store.

When we arrived in class on Friday, chef told us we would be crafting our own mini dessert, which had to be plated.  He wanted the dessert itself inside a small glass but presented on a plate.  This is the type of dessert that is commonly served before the actual dessert in a gastronomic restaurant in France.  Yes, they have two…well rather almost three…desserts.  But more on the “full course meal of the French” later.

His only requirement other than the size of the dish is that we utilized left over poached pears we had in the kitchen.  That was to be the fruit and focus of the dessert, but other than that we had free reign.  Awesome!  I spent the first bit of time exploring the kitchen to find things I thought would work well with the pears, but still things I could play with.  I didn’t want to try any new techniques, but I did want to experiment with flavors we hadn’t done already that week.  After all, here was a golden opportunity to play.  I took full advantage and came up with this beauty…

 

In the glass, you have layers of pistachio biscuit, chopped poached pears mixed with peanut and pecan brittle and coffee cream.  A thin strip of chocolate garnishes the top of the glass.  Peanut and pecan brittle lines the plate where alternating squares of poached pear and chocolate discs serve as the garnish.

Chef thought the design of my plate was good, although it lacked sauce which he didn’t like.  He also applauded my efforts to try new flavors, but thought I had incorporated one too many ingredients.  His suggestion was to get rid of the addition of coffee and flavor the cream with a spice that was found in the poaching liquid.  Strangely enough, I had thought of doing that, but thought it would done by others and I wanted to be different.  Overall I was pleased with how my mini dessert came out and look forward to being able to play this game again!

Of course Chef whipped up a mini dessert of his own, utilizing only about a fourth of the time we had and came up with this little masterpiece.

 

Ok, so I admit I asked for him to do it, but I’m glad I got to see what a really pastry chef can come up with…and in only 40 minutes.  One day, I will get there!!

Can you believe we’ve been here a month???