Cold Desserts, Day 9

Practical Day 2....

1. The day started with the chef tasting both our ice cream and our sorbet. He wanted them to sit overnight, so that is the sorbet seperated it would be obvious. All was well with mine!

2. Finaly I had to plate my parfait glacee.

I started by making my tuile cookies. Here is the batter and some stencils.

Here is my plate with sauce and chocolate piping on it.

Here is my plated dessert.

Here are my table-mates plates.

Here is Brandi's dessert

Once we plated our parfaits, we had to move them to the front table. They had to hold up for fifteen minutes in order to pass. So here are everyones plates.

That was the end of Cold Desserts!

Cold Desserts, Day 8

Day 1 of Practical....

1. I started off the bay by making a quart of French vanilla ice cream. This was a very quick and easy part of the final. I had the ice cream in the freezer by 7:45.

2. Then I went on to sorbet. We could make any flavor, but I chose to do cassis again. It worked out well the first time, and I didn't want to take any chances. This was another quick and easy thing.

3. The most difficult part of our final was a plated parfait glacee. This is the exact same mixture that goes in the center of a bombe. The difference is in the shape. A parfait glacee is frozen in a cylinder mold, and is later removed to be free standing. I had to get the mixture in the mold and frozen for the next day. I flavored my mixture with passion fruit, no surprise there!

For our plated parfait we had to have the glacee, a sauce, chocolate piping, and a tuile cookie.
I made a quick raspberry sauce, just raspberries sugar and water. I didn’t want to make the cookies until the day of plating, because the humidity can make them soft overnight. We made the cookie batter as a group and put it in the fridge. You just have to throw everything in a mixer and turn it on.

4. The final thing of the day was to make apple crisp. We each had to turn in three portions for grading. It was the exact same recipe as we used previously, so there were no surprises.

That was all for day 1 of practical.

Cold Desserts, Day 7

1. The day started off with more ice cream. We first made a french base, that we could flavor however we chose. My group decided to do sweet potato. We used baked sweet potatos, that we peeled and mashed. We mixed the potato into the ice cream and added clove, cinnamon, ginger, mace, and allspice. The idea was to make it taste like pie. I then had the idea to take the pie concept one step further, and fold in pie crust. To do this we made a quick pie crust, wich we baked in sheets then crumbled up. Once the crust was ready, we churned the ice cream and folded in the pieces. It turned out so well! The crust stayed nice and crispy (even 4 days later, when the ice cream was finally polished off), and the ice cream had a warm spicy flavor. Definatly a success!

Crust pieces.

2. Next we worked with commercial ice cream base. The base is essentialy just sugar and stabilzers that you add milk to. The benefit to commercial base is that it doesn't require heating, so it is very quick to make. The down side is that it lacks the consistancy and dept of flavor of homemade. The chef made about 6 gallons of base, which was then divvied up between the groups to flavor and churn. We added banana flavor to our base. We wanted to add a chocolate swirl, so we put ganache in a piping bag. After the ice cream was churned, and as it was being extracted, we pushed the piping bag into the ice cream and squeezed ganache into the ice cream. The flavor was nice, but the conistancy is a little icy compared to our french ice creams.

3. Baklava was next on the agenda. We made a walnut and pecan filling for ours, since one of our group members dosn't like pistachios. All we really had to do was layer phyllo dough with butter and ground nuts. Once the baklava was layered, we scored to top. Otherwise the baklava would just crumble when it is cut. We baked it until golden, then poured a syrup of honey, water, and spices over the baklava. It turned out well, but it was a little sweet for my taste.

4. The day finished with apple strudel. We made the dough, which is increadably easy. You just throw everything in a mixer with a dough hook and turn it on and let it run for 10 minutes. We then portioned the dough into four pieces, and let it rest. Whhile the dough rested, we prepped the filling. We peeled and sliced apples, which we tossed with brown sugar, cinnamon, and ginger. We made enough filling for 2 strudels, even though we had four pieces of dough. The chances of successfully stretching all four pieces was pretty slim.

Next we had to strech the dough. The 24 ounce balls had to be stretched to cover half of the table. You lay out cotton sheets to put the dough on once it is stretched. The dough needs to end up thin enough to read through. This is actually easier than it sounds when you have 3 people. It is just like stretching a giant pizza. You have to grab it from below and stretch it from the center outward. Once the dough is thin enough you drape it over the edge of the table and lay it out on the sheet.

I obviously couldn't photo my own group stretching the dough, so these two photos are of the chefs demo.

Once the dough is streched, you cover it wth melted butter. Then you sprinkle the dough with bread crumbs. Beacuse the dough is so thin, and the cooking apple produce juice, you need to crumbs to soak up liquid and prevent sogginess.

The apples are then piled along one edge of the dough.

You then have to use the sheet to help in rolling the strudel up. Here is an internet photo to show you what I am talking about.

The strudel is then transfered to a sheet pan, brushed with butter and baked.

Again, this isn't ours but it gives you idea of what it looks like when it is finished and sliced.

Cold Desserts, Day 6

1. Today was a warm dessert day (part of the the class it to make desserts that are traditionally served with ice cream). We started by making apple crisps. They were very simple, just sauteed apples and strusel. We baked them is metal molds, so that they could be unmolded and platted. We didn't plate them, instead we gave them to the class next door to use. They just had to slide the metal off, and you can see the apples are exposed.

These look pretty messy, beacuse as they cooked the juice became very caramelized.

2. Next up was cobbler. We chose to do a cherry filling flavored with almond and topped with cream scones. We made extra scone dough, so we baked it off and ate scones with honey for breakfast. When the crisp was finished, we took it next door and served it with ice cream to other pastry students.

3. Finally, our group maned the ice cream cart again today. We went up to the culinary floor, and had a steady stream of people for about an hour.

Cold Desserts, Day 5

I have been having computer problems, so I am a bit behind on posting. Beacuse of that, I am going to try and do a bunch of posts in on sitting. Therefore, these post will be relativly brief. Here it goes....

1. Our group had a lot of leftover meringure from the day before, so we decided to make baked maringue cookies. All you have to do is pipe the meringue onto trays and bake them at a really low temp. We ended up with 8 trays of cookies. They were not very exciting, but it was better than throwing the meringue away.

2. We then moved on to make a double batch of french vanilla ice cream. I feel like I have earned a degree in vanilla ice cream, we have made so much!

3. Each person had to make crepes. We made the batter as a group, and took turns cooking them. It is much harder than you would think to make crepes on an induction burner, beacuse it is so hard to control the temperature. It would go from screaming hot to cold very easily. We each had to present 6 crepes to the chef. I was the last one to cook mycrepes, and there was not much batter left, so I wasn't able to trow any of mine away. Thus, there are a few that are a bit darker than I would like.

After we presented our crepes, we were allowed to fill and eat them. We had a buch of different savory fillings, which was a welcome change. No ice cream for breakfast today!

4. The majority of class time was dedicated to bananas foster. We each had to flambee one banana on the gas range. This process took so long beacuse we had to go one at a time, so chef could grade our techinque and flames. In order to see the flames the lights were off, which pretty much brings a kitchen to a stand still. There is not much that can be done in the dark. My bananas foster turned out well, but there aren't any photos since I had my hands full.

Bananas foster ingredients: butter, brown sugar, rum, and banana liquor.

5. Finally the bombe was unveiled. It was a little anti-climactic, beacuse the inside of our bombe was brown on brown. But it stayed up, which was enough for me! Once it was sliced we delivered the halfs to culinary classes.