Advanced Restaurant Desserts Week 8 & 9

For Week 9, we talked about 'mignardise' (meen-yar-deez). It's a sweet little bite of cake, cookie, confection, etc. given to the diner with the bill at the end of a meal. It's to show hospitality, a little "thank you", and acts as a finale. Kind of like a fortune cookie we get at Chinese restaurants. Our assignment was to come up with a mignardise on a whim--and we are allowed to use any component that we've made so far in class.
Now for the plated desserts...in Week 8, my group made raspberry gelee, a pistachio cake, lemon sorbet, and lemon chip. Week 9, we made chocolate beignet, which is chocolate-stuffed doughnuts, milk chocolate ganache, and hazelnut glass for garnish.

Other group's desserts:
Back: Mango fritter, spongecake, cheesecake ice cream
Middle: Parfait, baba-coffee-marsala, peanut brittle, creme anglaise
Front: chocolate chip cookie, as mignardise

Chef thought chocolate chip cookie as mignardise is a great idea, but one is enough per customer.

Other group's desserts:
Back: Macaron with caramel-chocolate ganache, caramel sauce, coconut soil, chocolate garnish
Middle: Chocolate Bavarian w/Chocolate spray, Red velvet cake soil, cocont frangipane, flexible passionfruit curd
Front: salted chocolate toffee, as mignardise

Chef thought the middle plate needed height. The flexible curd can be twirled, bent, and manipulated to add some cool shapes and height to the plate. He thought the toffee would be a nice, crunchy finish to a meal.

Other groups's desserts:

Back: French Baguette, Gianduja ganache, Ocumare chocolate sauce
Middle: Orange-Almond cake, Mango Chiboust, Raspberry gelee
Front: Orange-Almond cake & raspberry gelee 'sandwich'

Chef thought that the French Baguette plate was 'too triangular'; the sauce on the middle plate should mirror the cake, and shouldn't be comma-shaped; the mignardise is interesting but good, nice portion size (mignardise should be one-bite size).

Our group's dessert: Pistachio Cake, Raspberry gelee, Lemon Chip, Lemon sorbet, chopped pistachios

Chef thought it was very nicely plated, good portion size, and flavor on all the components.

Our dessert: Milk Chocolate Beignets, apricot paper, Milk Chocolate ganache, Hazelnut glass spoon

Chef thought the glass and the presentation was beautiful...but the ganache turned out WAY grainy. I had stirred it too vigorously, in hopes that it'll cool down and thicken faster. Over working the chocolate had caused the sugar to crystallize... :(

And our mignardise: White chocolate-covered Orange Almond cake

Chef thought it was a great idea to use up leftover components.

Week 10 is our final. This time, there must be 6 components, at least 1 frozen, and at least 1 sauce. Here's my plan: Five-spice Blanc Manger, Lychee gelee, Coconut sorbet, Coconut frangipane, Almond brittle, and Mango sauce. Hope they turn out OK...