Intro to Pastry Week 5--Blackbox Midterm

Winter is finally here. We had a bounty of apples from our tree this year, and I took the opportunity to cook and can them for--what else?--Apple pie!

Now that I can make some decent pie crusts (a dramatic improvement from horrifying garbage I used to make months ago...), I made several apple pies. One went to a potluck at church few weeks ago (and that I forgot to mention in the previous posts). Another lady also made an apple pie, but she was going around bragging to everyone that it's "the best pie" and "highly recommend it"...over other desserts that other people brought. HOW. RUDE.

But here's one of my apple pies....

I prefer the nut-streusel topping than the traditional two-crust or the lattice-top. The streusel provides a nutty crunch and textural contrast to the tender apples and the flaky crust. Another thing that I've started doing is rolling the pie dough via folding. It's a procedure similar to making laminated doughs (i.e. puff pastry, croissants, etc). This produces a very flaky crust with many layers, but it's tougher than the regular pie crust. But my family and friends said that the pie, especially the crust, is phenomenal and delicious. Maybe the Americans would prefer the more tender regular crust than this "laminated" version.

And speaking of apple pies--our friend Chef Toshi, the executive chef at Naked Fish, was one of the friends who ate my apple pie. He had fallen head over heels for it, and asked if I can make it as one of the desserts at the restaurant.

I sighed. Using some gross grocery store-bought apples that have been ethylene gassed will NEVER produce the same product no matter what. What made that apple pie delicious was the apples--organic, unsprayed, from our backyard. And using ingredients harvested from someone's backyard is frowned upon by the FDA. Yes, the pie is delicious. Yes, people would probably pay for it. But this is the limit of restaurant food--it can't duplicate the taste of homemade.

This is the Mocha Trifle, my own invention being served at the restaurant...Layers of chocolate syrup (made by me--we use Hershey's only during emergencies), chocolate and coffee custard, rum-soaked ladyfingers, and lightly sweetened whipped cream. For service, we dust it with cocoa powder and a tuile. So far, this has been our most popular dessert. I am stoked! :)

So on to our Blackbox Midterm!

Each group got an assortment of blackbox ingredients. Each student had to come up with unique plated dessert; we didn't have to use every ingredients given, but had to incorporate at least one of them--and we were not allowed to use the ingredients from other groups.

My group walked up to our table, which had: Blueberries, grapefruits, peanutbutter, cashews, almond extract, and white chocolate.I immediately thought, "Blueberry-White Chocolate Mousse", but dismissed the thought. Too common. Everyone will come up with that. So I turned my attention to the grapefruit. I started calculating....

Lemon + White Chocolate = tasty combo; Lemon = citrus; Grapefruit = citrus; therefore, Grapefruit + White Chocolate = potentially tasty combo

So just to double check, I ate a grapefruit segment with some white chocolate chips. Wow. Not bad at all! I finalized my dessert plan: Grapefruit-White Chocolate Mousse Profiterole with blueberry sauce, and cashew tuile.

We had two days to do this. On the first day, I baked the choux pastry shells and experimental Grapefruit-White Chocolate mousse (since I've never made this before). Second day, I checked on the mousse. Oh boy. Too stiff. I had to come up with a different method--and decided to make a grapefruit curd with white chocolate, then fold in whipped cream to make the mousse. I crossed my fingers and let it chill in the fridge. In the meantime, I made the blueberry sauce, and baked the tuiles.

It seemed like I didn't do much, but each task took me a while, mostly because I was unfamiliar with some of the recipes. Plating time approached fairly quickly, and all of us managed to plate ours on time.

One of my team member, J's midterm: Blueberry & White Chocolate Mousse with Cashew Cookie.

This one is done by G. I think it's Blueberry & White Chocolate Frozen Souffle in tuile cup, with grapefruit sorbet.

...and this one is mine. Grapefruit-White Chocolate Mousse Profiterole with blueberry sauce and grapefruit curd.

Chef said that most of our products are way too big, but did a pretty good job for a midterm. But she asked the important question: Is this worth ten hours of work? She had a point. We had ten hours to do this--and now that I think about it, I guess I could've done more.

I am now determined to do better for the final in a few weeks.