Last day of Plated Desserts

Fun butterfly day! Wahoo!

Fontaine with phyllo triangles, trio of sauces, cinnamon ice cream, and a chocolate butterfly. The fontaine is a chocolate genoise piece, ganache, and fresh raspberries wrapped in phyllo dough and baked so the ganache is molten. It's delicious

Katailfi dough (shredded phyllo) nest with Fromage Blanc mousse, pear cherry compote, port honey reduction, and tuile butterfly.
Yay for plated desserts!

Plated Desserts with Chef Juergen!

This is the whole section, minus one day, tomorrow.

Sour cherry soup with creme fraiche

Toasted Pannetone with Marsala Zabaglione, quince cherry compote, and earl grey sorbet

Artsy close up of the quince cherry compote

Poached, grilled pineapple and kumquats with balsamic vinegar, basil pineapple sorbet, a tuile cookie, and champagne sabayon

Pumpkin soup with gingerbread croutons and cranberry swirl

Sour cherry soup with almond custard cues, cinnamon hippen, and cinnamon ice cream

Panna Cotta with dried fruit compote. hippen, and Riesling granita

Exotic fruit soup with sesame tuiles and ginger lemongrass ice cream

Tiramisu with chocolate cup, mocha granita, a hippen spoon, cappucino Anglaise, and chocolate sauce

The plating of the chocolate mendiants

Chocolate Hazelnut Mediant with chocolate fence, kirsh caramel sauce, cherry compote, chocolate sauce, clear vanilla sauce, creme legere, a caramel twist, and a hazelnut tuille

White chocolate-citrus parfait with pineapple pomegranate salad, citrus Anglaise, caramel sauce, white chocolate ruffle, and lemon nougatine

Chocolate mint dome with orange mint coulis, chocolate cigarette, candied orange peel, orange mint salad, and a lace cookie cup

White chocolate hazelnut semifreddo with pear pound cake, seckel pear compote, white chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, and a white chocolate cut out

Yay for plated desserts and having to taste every single thing we make! We also did some really fun assignments where we had to come up with our own desserts. We had to come up with 10 item dessert menu for the restaurant attached to our school. It's a classic French restaurant with ethnic influences. Here's my menu:

Chocolate Ginger Souffle with Coconut curry ice cream and lemongrass creme Anglaise
Lemon Tartlette with White chocolate ice cream, coconut tuiles, rum caramel sauce, and coconut creme Anglaise
Sweet Potato Pie with whiskey glaze, walnut tuiles, and dried fig compote
Pumpkin Spice creme Bruee with cream cheese ice cream, spice cake, and a dark caramel sauce
Apple Cranberry Crumle with vanilla bean ice cream, cranberry sauce, and an apple chip
Champagne Citrus Sorbet in a meringue bowl with blood orange segments, honey caramel sauce, and grapefruit coulis
Macadamia nut sponge cake with passion fruit filling, penuche glaze, pineapple sauce, vanilla sauce, and white chocole creme Anglaise
Maple Chestnut Tart with pear sauce, chestnut creme fraiche ice cream, and mape pear compote
Gianduja chocolate ganache tart with cherry sorbet, cherry coulis, and hazelnut creme Anglaise
Frozen Yogurt with seasonal fruit (pear, persimmon, and kiwi), and brown sugar sauce

We each had to come up with a menu, then write our two favorite items on the board and as a class narrow it to the 8 best, or favorites. I wrote up the ginger chocolate souffle and the maple chestnut tart. Neither was chosen :( Here are the items the class did choose:

Spiced Pot de Creme
Gianduja chocolate ganache tart with fleur de sel, spicy caramel creme Anglaise, and hazelnut tuile
Peach souffle crepe with pineapple orange brown butter sauce, and banana ice cream
Chocolate ravioli with bittersweet chocolate sauce and cardamom cream
Tarte aux Seckel Poire en Cage with creme Anglaise
Chocolate layer cake with pistachio pastry cream, creme Anglaise, and chocolate ice cream
Orange crepe with blackberry sorbet
Vol-au-Vents with pineapple and pomegranate

We are going to work on it I think (I hope) to make it better. I would ony order one, maybe two of the items on the menu. We also played a fun Iron Chef game, where we got two ingredients (pears and cream cheese) and in an hour and a half had to come up with a complete dessert, diagram it, and plate two portions. It was quite fun. I made a butterscotch cake with cream cheese filling, maple glazed pears, and a white chocolate creme Anglaise.
Soon I will have fun pictures of sugar showpieces!

Chocolate Showpieces

We had to make chocolate showpieces based on our favorite movie. we had two days to do so. We also had a weight limit- it had to be between 1000 and 1500 grams. Nearly everyone in the class was within the limits, fortunately. Here are some pictures of some of the best in the class, as well as mine, which is unfortunately nowhere near the best in the class.

Josh and Claudia

Sofia

Kelly

Caitlin

Amy

Violetta

Mine
I was really, really disappointed with the way mine turned out. I had a good idea in my head, but because of time constraints, and serious breakage, I wasn't able to carry out everything I wanted to do. So it's just really ugly. I should have gone with my other idea for a movie, which I could have made much more visually interesting. You can't see very well, but there's a silhouette of the crazy man who murders his wife, holding a knife, in the right hand upper window.
Next we move on to our second round of plated desserts- should be fun! Only 6 more weeks to go!

Chocolate again

I apologize for the lack of posts- my internet has been down, and we have been making candies and bonbons, so I haven't taken pictures of all of them. Here's a cake we made, though- kind of ugly. The inside was a chocolate cake with raspberry mousse filling, and chocolate buttercream. Those dots are supposed to by ants, but my cute idea didn't really come out :( The flowers are made of white modeling chocolate. Tomorrow we start a new showpiece- pictures to come on friday! Then we move on to plated desserts #2

Pastillage (aka the devil) Cake Stands

So pastillage, the devil, is really just sugar and gelatin and vinegar. No one eats it, but it is technically edible, and is very strong, so it can be used as a support in a structure. Our task was to make a cake, covered in fondant, and put it on a cake stand, made entirely of pastillage. Not one person in my class liked the stuff, so it made for some grumpy classmates. Our theme was our first initial. My theme changed back and forth between Snakes and Sahara- it works for either.

Frank- Fire


Josh- Japan


Claudia- Circus


Amy- Arabian Nights (notice the camels and their shadows on top of the cake!)


Sofia- Spring


Caitlin- Celestial


Sheron- Starbursts


Kelly- Some Japanese Anime whose name I don't know. But hers was fantastic. This is pre- putting the cake on

And here is my Snake. I really disliked this whole project, and that shows in the final product- it's sloppy, and overly simple. The only parts I like are the painted palm trees on the support, and the snakey on top. On the first day, when I showed Chef Dianne my design, she said that it wasn't possible to shape a snake out of pastillage, because it begins to dry the moment it touches the air, and the surface would be crackly and I wouldn't have enough time to mold the shape before it dried. She was half right. I was set on having a three dimensional snake, not one just cut out of a sheet of pastillage,so I tried it anyway. In the end, the cracks worked to my advantage, giving snakey a more authentic look of having scales. This is definitely not my best work, but it didn't fall, and what my teacher said was impossible worked.

Sugar Paste Flowers

We're in our sugar section, which has mostly consisted of making things out of pastillage- a miserable substance that I hope never to touch after I graduate. We also got to have a lesson on how to make sugar paste flowers. We just did some basics- roses, tulips, and cala lilies, but I feel like I have a better grasp of how to make lifelike flowers than I did before.
The following are examples brought in to show us, not ones I made (I wish I could claim them as my own!)




Here are mine








Monday is our last day of pastry II, then we move right on into Pastry III, our last level.