Advanced Restaurant Desserts Week 5

Advanced Restaurant Dessert Week 5

Oh my goodness...We're already halfway through the quarter! In Week 5, we talked about incorporating the savory into desserts: cheeses, herbs & spices, meats (bacon!), and vegetables. Other than the bacon, incorporating these savory elements into desserts is nothing new. Cheesecakes have cheese, apple pies have spices, and carrot cakes have (of course) carrots in it.

Today, we prepped the desserts for next week...
1. Mimic cheese plate: wine gelee, brioche, and blue cheese cake (which I'm excited for)
2. Vegetable Dessert (my group's): acorn squash panna cotta, orange almond cake, candied pecans and seeds, poached squash
3. Meat Dessert: buttermilk pancake, peanut butter mousse, bacon-chocolate ice cream, lavash with bacon-maple syrup, banana brulee
4. Herbs & Spices: olive oil cake with orange zest lemon-thyme gelee, lime-basil sorbet, orange

Then we plated the products we made in Week 4...

Chef pulling sugar. Tasted like cotton candy, stuck to the teeth like toffee.

Sticky Toffee Pudding: Toffee Pudding Cake, Apple Sorbet, Toffee powder, Toffee Sauce, Toffee popcorn, pulled sugar

The cake was pretty good, but the popcorn was really sticky...

Mint Brownie: Mint-Chocolate Chip Ice Cream, Nut Brownie, Flexible Chocolate, Chocolate Plaque, Fudge Powder

Here, the elements of a mint brownie (the chocolate, the mint, the brownie) is taken apart and enhanced. It was good, but way too sweet for me :(

Cinnamon Doughnuts: Cinnamon Doughnuts, Vanilla Sabayon, Vanilla Ice Cream, Caramel sauce

Sabayon is a mousse-like dessert made of wine. I was getting tipsy off of it, but it tasted so good!

Dessert Sushi: Coconut Rice Pudding wrapped in Mango sheet, Coconut Foam, Basil Sauce, Strawberry Sauce, Strawberry Brunoise, White Chocolate-Curry Garnish

Our group's project. To be honest, I didn't really like this dessert--the recipe says to fold in whipped cream into the pudding, but since we wanted to roll it up like sushi, we didn't. The result was a gummy mess, and the Mango sheet was too sticky. Didn't really care for the flavor of it either--sorry, not a big coconut fan.

Next week is our Midterm! Chef assigned a classical dessert to each of us. We need to come up with a dessert based on them, that contains at least 5 components that must include 1 frozen item, and 1 sauce. I got...s'mores. I already have so many ideas I don't know what to do with them...

Advanced Restaurant Desserts Week 4

Advanced Restaurant Desserts Week 4

This class gets confusing in that the desserts that are plated this week was actually prepared and made last week... So technically, all these desserts were made last week. For Week 4, we made Sticky Toffee Pudding with Caramel, Cinnamon Doughnuts with ice cream, and Sushi Rice Pudding. These will be plated on Week 5.

We talked about different kinds of dessert sauces. The more traditional ones are caramel, chocolate, fruit (both cooked and raw), and custards. With modern gadgets, we can make powders, papers, and foams to make "sauces".
Now for the Desserts...

Banana Tiramisu: Vanilla Mousse, Banana Bread, Banana gelee, Chocolate Sauce, Caramelized nuts

I didn't really like this one. Maybe it was the banana gelee...I'm not sure if I like the banana with jelly texture...

Deconstructed Red Velvet Cake: Flexible Chocolate, Milk Chocolate Pudding Cube, Red Velvet Cake Crumble, Cheesecake Ice Cream

I LOVE the composition of this dessert. The bright red color of the cake provides a stark contrast to the other components and the white plate. That and chocolate is always good.

Deconstructed Opera Cake: Chocolate Decadence, Hazelnut Bavarian, Apricot jelly, Coffee gelee, Chocolate Sauce

As a coffee lover, I couldn't stop eating the Coffee gelee. The flavor of this one, especially the Chocolate Decadence, was phenomenal!

Deconstructed Fraisier Torte: Vanilla Chiffon, Strawberry Mousse, Yogurt Mousse, Strawberry-Rosemary Sorbet, Strawberry Paper, Strawberry Powder, Rosemary Sauce

Our group made this one. The Strawberry Mousse didn't set properly (the Yogurt Mousse did), so instead of a disc, we had to make a quenelle of it. The sorbet was soooo good! Rosemary added an herbacious fragrance to the fruity sorbet.

With two classes and work, time whizzes by in a blur. We'll have our Midterm very soon...