Wedding Cake, The Assignment

Our last project before we start the final exam is to make a three-tier wedding cake. The students in the level below us are the "couple" and come up with a wedding theme, location, flowers, attire, etc. We each design a cake for their wedding. On the last day of the project, they come back up and pick their favorite--like the couple ordering a cake.

There are two difficult aspects to the project. The first aspect is something unavoidable--you have to accommodate the theme and details provided by the couple (or in our case the "couple"). That's fine, except the wedding is not what I would have picked at all and I couldn't do a lot of the things I would have liked to do. Ah well...you have to do what the client wants. The second thing is something that won't be an issue in the future--we have never made a cake that is larger a two tier 6in and 3in cake. This must be at least three tiers and the top tier must be at least 3in, meaning that the bottom tier would be at least 7in, probably more. I'm a little worried that my cake will end up resembling the leaning tower of Pisa. At least we can use cake dummies (styrofoam cylinders or, I suppose, styrofoam in any shape we need) for any extra layers.

The wedding we are designing cakes for is being held in Barcelona, Spain at the Park Guell (it's beautiful, look it up if you aren't familiar with it). The attire is traditional black tie, with the bride in long simple, strapless, sheath dress with a sheer over skirt and ribbon trim--no embroidery, no beading, no details to use on the cake. The wedding colors are cool lava and spiced butternut--in other words, muted orange and golden yellow. The flowers are gazanias, red poppies, orange blossoms, and wheatgrass--at least that's what their presentation said, the photos were of anemones instead of poppies and wheat instead of wheat grass. I'm guessing that the anemone was a mistake, it's one of the first photos when you do a google image search for red poppies (possibly because one of the most common species of anemone is the so-call poppy anemone) and they are very similar looking flowers. The wheat on the other hand was probably what they meant. I think wheat is an odd choice for a bouquet, but wheatgrass--looking just like regular grass--is definitely odder; I'm going to assume they mean stalks of wheat when they said wheatgrass. Luckily Chef Kir told use we could make our sugar paste flowers at home if we wanted to since they take quite a while given the amount of time they need to dry between different steps of making them (i.e. the petals for a wired flower must be completely dry before assembling the whole flower). We are allowed to interpret the given theme however we wish and can, in theory, ignore it completely although I'd imagine that would impact our grades. Our grades, by the way, are based mainly on execution of our proposed design and our technical skill, I believe.

Just to give you an idea, my class came up with an Indian themed wedding held at a vineyard in California when we were the "couple." The colors were red, fuchsia, orange, and gold, with bright tones for the ceremony and more muted tones for the reception. The bride, Hindu of Indian descent, wore a traditional sari in bright pink and had henna tatoos--the patterns of which were reflected on the invitations and menu. The flowers were primarily roses, marigolds, and orchids. The wedding cakes that the class above us made were all beautiful. Below are a few of my favorites. I honestly can't remember which one my class picked as the winner, but I'm sure it is on here. (Please note that I do not know which student made which cake--they assign us numbers so that we won't be biased when we pick our favorite--so I can't give them credit. Sorry!) In no particular order:

I really like the carnations around the middle
layer and am especially impressed with how
clean the cake is. The orchids on top were a little
clunky, which is a shame given how intricate the
carnations are.

I know the piping is a little wobbly, but I like
the idea of using the henna patterns and I think
the draping was nicely done.

I like the idea of using macaron cookies as
decorations for the cake. Admittedly, I'm not
sure I like the riser holding up the top layer.
They did a lovely job on it and I like that it
reflects the henna pattern, but I just have a
pet peeve about cakes with risers.

It's hard to tell, but that drape of red fondant was
actually decorated with gold dust and almost-but-
not-quite cut out silhouettes of flowers, it was quite
pretty in person. I do think it should have been draped
and pleated a bit more; that way the cut outs would
have been more apparent and it would have looked
a little more like fabric and a little less like someone
hemorrhaged on the cake. By the way, the orchids on top
were beautiful and very realistic.

The cake was nicely decorated, though I'm
not thrilled by the pattern and airbrushing.
What makes me love this cake is the topper:
how cute are the two little elephants with
their trunks forming a heart?!

This cake was a little sloppy in person (but oddly
shaped cakes are so difficult to work with.) What I
like is how they made the cakes look like a stack of
 cushions from the mandap; very creative.

I know this cake is a little over laden, but I like
the colors and the flowers were beautiful,
albeit a little out of proportion.

I feel like there is something off about the
alignment of this cake and I'm not sure I like
the giant bottom layer. However I love the
hexagonal layer with the concave sides and
the intricate (and well executed) piping. The
cake was very clean, something that is difficult
to achieve on a round cake with straight sides,
let alone on hexagonal cakes with concave sides.

Final Exam, The Assignment

Yikes the final exam is going to be hard! We have to make two cakes or tarts (one 6in and one mini version), 24 chocolates, 24 petits fours, and 24 pieces of viennoiserie. We don't get to choose what we make, instead we are randomly assigned the four recipes we will make. Our final grade is the average of our grade on the written exam, the grade our chef gives us on how we are working during the final exam classes, and the grade awarded by the guest judges who evaluate our exam. The guest judges are real chefs from outside the school; they evaluate us on the taste of our baked goods and on our final showpiece.

I have to make a 6in and a 3in lemon chiffon cake with lemon curd filling and basket-weave buttercream. I also have to make two dozen cherry danish, two dozen mini lemon curd tartlets, and two dozen pieces of chocolate covered peanut butter nougat.

I'm happy about the tartlets, I'm really good at making them. I'm happy with the nougat because it's definitely easier than bonbons and it's really delicious! I'm not thrilled about the danish, because they require a lot of last minute work (as do the tartlets), but they are fine. I like the lemon chiffon cake and it's not too hard to make. I can use the same filling for the cake and the tartlets, so that's not too bad. The real problem with this set of items is that I have to do basket-weave icing on both cakes, which is difficult and time consuming and should be done the last day because it can't be touched up if it get smudged when it is stored. I may do it the second to last day and just store them really, really carefully. Hopefully that'll be okay.

We also have to make a showpiece to display our large cake and half of the chocolates and petits fours. Our theme is "my imagination". Even though it's very open ended, I'm not sure I'm thrilled with it; I'd actually prefer a little guidance. I'm leaning towards something related to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory because every time I think about the theme I start humming the tune of "Pure Imagination," the song that Gene Wilder sings when he welcomes everyone to the chocolate factory and shows them the room with the chocolate waterfall.

In the interim, we have our wedding cake project (I'll tell you more about that soon). We started it yesterday and finish on June 4th then we start our final the next class...have I mentioned yikes!

Update: Read about my final exam here.

Review Day

Traditional Croissants

Today we had our final exam review day. We pulled out all our dough and baked a number of different items that may show up on our final exams. We made danish, croissants, pain au chocolate, brioche a tete (well actually just the dough and the chef demoed making the rolls), and a tarte bourdaloue. Happily, these are some of my favorite things we've made the whole course, so I'm very happy we got to make them again.

Front row: pinwheels with cream cheese filling;
back row: packages with raspberry jam and almond filling.

I had some fun practicing making different shaped danish with different fillings. I personally liked the cream cheese filling and cinnamon streusel topping. Shape-wise I like the little packages (and I finally got them to look right) but I think the pinwheels are my favorite--they look nice and are very easy to make.

First row: ham and cheese;
second and third rows: almond;
fourth and fifth rows: plain.

We also got to play around with flavors for our croissants. I made plain, ham and cheese, and almond. Traditionally plain croissants are curved, giving them their crescent shape, while filled croissants are not. I was going to put slivered almonds on top of the almond ones after I egg washed them before I put them in the oven, but unfortunately I forgot, so they just had the almond filling.

We learnt a new way to cut pain au chocolate, which made the process much quicker but keep them looking lovely as always.

The tarte bourdaloue was excellent as always. We used canned pear halves rather than poached pears which was significantly easier and didn't really impact the final product. I do think the pears shriveled up a bit more than the poached ones when we baked the tarts; the taste was the same though, so I suppose a slight aesthetic difference isn't too big of a deal.

Menu Project, The Food

Guinness Chocolate Cake: See how the dark, cylindrical cake with the
foamy, white cream on top resembles a pint of Guinness? Cute, huh?

As I mentioned in my description of the menu project, the chefs ordered two desserts from my menu of high-end twists on comfort food: the Guinness Chocolate Cake with Creme Fraiche Ice Cream, Creme Fraiche Cream, and Guinness Chocolate Sauce (a twist on chocolate cake); and the Brie, Chocolate, and Basil Panini on Sourdough with an Orange Basil Salad and Orange Philadelphia-style Ice Cream (a twist on grilled cheese). I had to plate two of each and bring one of each up to the chefs at a designated time. That was intense...so intense that I didn't even get to take photos of them in class. Luckily I'd practiced one at home before and had enough left over of the other to plate it at home today so I do have photos of the desserts, just not from the night I made them in class.

A few relevant details of the project I forget to mention before: we were allowed to bring our own plates, but didn't have to. We were not required to make an amuse bouche, but it is allowed (although not mentioned by the chefs, I figured it out from taking to former students). The chefs sit up at the front of the class and you must carry everything up to them (in contrast to the usual judging where they come to you) at a chosen time that is different for each person so that hot food stays hot and cold stays cold (in contrast to the usual judging where everyone finishes at the same time and the judges get to you when they get to you).

Now that that's out of the way, I can tell you what I did. I decided to make a sort of amuse bouche. I bought different plates for each of my desserts and a beautiful tray that matches my restaurant theme perfectly (you can see it in the picture of the cake, above) to use to carry everything up to the chefs on. I knew I needed something to carry them on since I was going to be bringing up one of each of the ordered desserts plus an amuse for each of them and I don't have four hands--shocking I know--and I thought a sheet pan covered with parchment would look crappy.

My first dessert (pictured above), the Guinness chocolate cake was a hit. My ice cream came out perfectly, something I surprised myself with because I tend to have a bit of trouble making a perfect creme anglaise ice cream base. My cake, the chefs said, was not quite Guinness-y enough and ever so slightly dry. They said I should have "refreshed" them in the oven and then doused them in a Guinness soak. Actually, I'd thought of doing that, but was afraid I'd over soak them and make them soggy, so I opted to go with the plain cake because I know it's really good. I'm a bit annoyed at myself that I didn't take the risk, but they still liked the cake and really liked everything else on the plate.

I cut the crusts off when I did this in class and served it
with slightly less salad.

My second dessert, the panini, came out almost perfect. My panini got ever so slightly over cooked, so there was a tiny bit of burnt cheese, but other than that (and iced cream that slid a bit on my plate) everything was actually exactly how I wanted it. The chefs didn't even mind the iced cream moving on the plate--to be honest they probably didn't notice, I only knew the scoops were wrong because I knew where I wanted them. The chefs liked my panini and the concept of a dessert panini. By the way, Philadelphia style ice cream (or iced cream, as I call it) is ice cream that is not churned in a ice cream machine so it comes out a bit icy but actually slightly lighter than regular ice cream. I'm really happy they liked this one so much because, out of the two, this was a bigger risk than the cake.

Sorry about the really strange coloring of the photo, perhaps I should have
used my real camera instead of the one on my iPhone.

My amuse went over very well. It was a sample of one of the small plates from my menu--a chocolate chip cookie and steamed vanilla milk. The chocolate chip cookies had a little bit of cocoa powder in the dough so they are almost chocolate chocolate chip cookies. I made them really small and served them with a demitasse cup of steamed milk. Technically, since we didn't have a steamer it wasn't steamed milk, it was frothed milk--I used one of those aerolatte thing-ies. I scalded the milk added some vanilla powder (it doesn't change the color like vanilla extract would) and just a dash of amaretto (I like the almond flavor with the cookie). The chefs both liked the amuse. I think part of what they liked was the taste and part of it was the fact that I put that extra effort into making something that wasn't required.

I'm thrilled with how well everything came out and with how much the chefs liked everything. We have three final projects (this, a wedding cake, and our final exam showpiece). I definitely got off to a good start with these!

Menu Project, The Assignment

Yesterday I started review in class by making a bunch of different doughs. We'll shape the dough in three classes, after the menu project. Now, I think, is a good time to explain the menu project. Basically we have to come up with a concept for a restaurant/bakery/dessert bar/etc. Complete with a brief business plan that includes a clearly defined concept, location (which must be in the tri-state area), the name of your place, and any other details you can think of (decor, colors, hours...) Additionally, you must design a menu with eight desserts (not including ice cream or petit four assortments or a cheese plate). The menu must use seasonal ingredients and reflect the general theme of the restaurant (obviously). The chefs order two desserts off your menu and, a few classes later, you must make and plate them.

For me, the menu and restaurant plan was challenging but right up my ally. I'm used to written work and presenting reports in an aesthetically pleasing manner. What worried me was developing recipes for the menu items that worked and making sure each component of each dessert tasted (and looked) good together. It took many a test recipe and even more tweaking to come up with desserts that worked, were delicious, fit the restaurant theme, were seasonal (spring is especially hard), showcased my talents, and minimized the odds that I'd be asked to do something I wasn't confident about.

Now that you know what the project was, I can tell you about my restaurant. It is a restaurant located in a high-end, mid-town hotel, that serves "comfort food for the discerning diner." In other words, classy twists of classic comfort food. As it turns out it's harder to come up with a balanced menu (not too much of one type of item--like cake--or one flavor--like chocolate) that fits the bill and is seasonal for spring.

The chefs ordered the Guinness Chocolate Cake with Creme Fraiche Ice Cream, Creme Fraiche Cream, and Guinness Chocolate Sauce; and the Brie, Chocolate, and Basil Panini on Sourdough with an Orange Basil Salad and Orange Philadelphia-style Ice Cream. I'm really happy they chose these, even if it does mean I have to lug my (well technically my mom's) cast iron grill pan and panini press top with me to class.

Update: you can read about the food I made for the menu project here.

Baked Ricotta with Orange Basil Salad and Orange Iced Cream

This was another practice dessert for my menu project. I'm glad I practiced it, because I've decided that I don't really like the baked ricotta--a twist on cheese cake--with the other two components. The problem with baked ricotta--this version was based on a recipe I found in a Gordon Ramsey cookbook--is that it isn't terribly flavorful and the salad and iced cream totally overwhelmed it. Also, it was harder than I'd expected to get the texture right, they came out either tough or almost runny. The salad was brilliant and the iced cream (basically whipped cream and fresh orange juice and zest frozen solid) was really nice, but perhaps a bit too icy.

I think I'm going to keep the salad and iced cream but switch from the baked ricotta to a chocolate, basil, and brie panini. It keeps cheese as part of the dish and ties in with the basil in the fruit salad, plus chocolate makes anything better. If the chefs order this, I'll discuss all the components in more detail.

Cool Food Science

In class the other day we did something very cool (no pun intended); we made ice cream with liquid nitrogen (okay, so there was a little pun intended). Basically, you put a creme anglaise ice cream base in the bowl of a kitchen aid fitted with a paddle. You have the mixer mixing (i.e. churning) the ice cream. Then you slowly pour in a significant amount of liquid nitrogen.

A scientific aside, liquid nitrogen has a boiling point of -195.8*C (77K or -321*F). If it is kept under pressure, it will boil very slowly, keeping its temperature at a constant -195.8*C. This means that it is very, very cold and will freeze things that touch it on contact. It also means that when it is poured out of its container and hits room temperature air or ice cream base, it will boil and, as the definition of boiling suggests, it will turn to nitrogen gas and float away.

This means that you can pour a flask of liquid nitrogen into the bowl of the mixer and it will freeze the ice cream as the mixer churns it. Because nitrogen is just air (it constitutes about 75% of the atmosphere) you don't need to worry about it touching the ice cream (as you would freon from a conventional ice cream machine). Because it takes a relatively short time to freeze the ice cream, it doesn't churn for very long and you get an exceptionally smooth product. Another benefit is, because liquid nitrogen is so cold, the ice cream is ready to eat right away--you don't need to freeze it to let it harden. One final bonus, it will freeze ice creams that have a lot of liquor in them. Liquor has a low freezing point and can therefore act as an anti-freeze, keeping ice cream with a high quantity of liquor slushy. However, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen is colder than the freezing point of liquor so the ice cream will freeze.

Of course liquid nitrogen can be dangerous, since it is so cold you can easily get freezer burns on your skin if you mishandle it. If you use it in a confined space it can increase the nitrogen in the air to such a high level that you can actually asphyxiate (this wouldn't happen from making one batch of ice cream in a kitchen, but it still seems important to mention, just in case). Since it has potential for being dangerous, we didn't get to make our own batches of ice cream but at least we got to watch Chef Kir act like a mad scientist while he made a batch for the class to try. Speaking of trying it, it tasted just like ice cream, except creamier and denser. In a word, it was excellent!

A blurry picture of the finished product on
the mixer's paddle.

Olive Oil Cakes

Ligurian Lemon Cake

Olive oil cakes are cakes made with olive oil in the batter...shocking, I know. They are incredible! The oil makes them moist but doesn't weigh them down too much. Plus the lovely flavor of the olive oil comes comes through in the cake, in contrast to most cakes where you add vegetable oil so that you won't be able to taste the oil. Now that I've said oil so much it has stopped seeming like a word (at least to me as I'm the one typing it) I'll get on to describing the whole dessert.

My favorite of the two desserts was the ligurian lemon cake with raspberries baked right into the cake and topped with bruleed Swiss meringue (although I could have done without the meringue). We served this with a very clear raspberry sauce, an almond tuile, and incredible honey almond gelato. I think the tuiles were a little out of proportion for the plate, but they did taste good so I don't mind too much.

Beaumes-de-Venise Cake

The other cake we made was not my favorite of the night but one of my favorites of the unit. It was a beaumes-de-venise cake with has grapes baked into it; served on a rectangular cookie made out of linzer tart dough; with an uncooked grape compote (to me that's more of a grape salad, but semantics aside, it was delicious), fromage blanc sherbet, more of the raspberry sauce (I may have left this off), and a cocoa nib caramel tuile. I liked the first dessert more because I loved the combination of tart lemon and sweet raspberry in the delicious, moist, rich but still light cake and the honey almond gelato was to die for. Still though, the grape cake (with a hint of beaumes-de-venise, also know as muscat, wine) and all its accompaniments were excellent. I'd be extremely happy if I got either of these desserts in a restaurant.

Chiboust Day

Today was chiboust day. Chiboust is pastry cream stabilized with gelatin and lightened with Italian meringue. Traditionally it is used as a filling for the Gateau Saint-Honore, but we used it to make individual tartlets. The first was a tart shell filled with a layer or two of sliced strawberries and topped with coconut chiboust. We served this with prune armagnac ice cream, a strip of coconut financier, and coconut foam. Everything was excellent but the coconut foam; we were serving it from one of those metallic whipping cream dispensers (there's a real name for those, but it's not coming to me right now) and the chef accidentally used the soda charger rather than the plain whipping/frothing charger so the foam came out too liquid and somewhat carbonated...oops! 

We also made a chocolate chiboust tart made simple of a rectangle of baked chocolate tart dough with chocolate chiboust piped on top. We served that with a sour cherry compote, chocolate and ancho chili sherbet, a cacao (or cocoa) nib and caramel tuile, and a piped chocolate decoration. Everything was delicious, especially the sherbet, although I'm not sure I liked the cherry compote and the sherbet together. The chocolate decorations were made by taking tempered chocolate and adding enough cocoa powder to it to thicken it to a pipe-able consistency. As the chef explained, basically we are taking couvature chocolate--chocolate with extra cocoa butter added to make it more fluid--and getting rid of the couvature by adding in more cocoa solids. So perhaps if you tempered a Hersey's bar--you can temper any chocolate, by the way--it would have nearly this consistency to start. Once the tempered chocolate is sufficiently thick, it's just a matter of piping it into interesting shapes. We made long rods of chocolate and some squiggly snakes but you could do anything you want. Because they are tempered they set up hard and with a even color and because they have extra cocoa powder they are slightly more bitter than the chocolate you started out with (in this case semi-sweet chocolate). Lovely and delicious!

Chocolate decorations

A la Minute Cakes

A la minute desserts are desserts that are baked to order. These two warm cakes were delicious. The first, a warm chocolate fondant (I don't know why it's call a fondant...it has no resemblance to the fondant you use on cakes and doesn't even have that as an ingredient), was delicious. It's basically a warm chocolate mousse cake. We served it with pistachio creme anglaise, chocolate sauce, decorative curls of tempered chocolate, and vanilla-raspberry swirl ice cream. The pistachio creme anglaise was a bit too green and not nutty enough for my taste. Other than that, I liked everything.

The chef's plating of the warm hazelnut cake.

Shockingly, I liked the non-chocolate dessert more! The warm hazelnut cake was delicious, the texture was perfect, and it unmolded much more easily and neatly than the fondant. We served it with white peach compote, vanilla salad, a hard caramel coated hazelnut, and salt sorbet. The peach compote was actually made in the sous vide machine so that the sweet white peaches were infused with basil and balsamic vinegar (I believe...I didn't actually make it). Because the peaches weren't cooked except for a few seconds so that the skin would peel off easily, they were still somewhat firm instead of being peach mush. The vanilla salad is not actually a salad, it's that giant ball of tuile. It's basically an abstract shaped flat tuile that is "tossed" when it comes out of the oven to shape it into abstract shaped tuile ball-like shape. It's interesting looking and really simple to make. Now I know you're thinking about that salt sorbet and wondering when I'm going to explain that...sorry I made you wait, I just want to make sure you keep reading. Salt sorbet is exactly what it sounds like--it's sorbet flavored with salt. It didn't taste salty, per se, instead it tasted like the milk left over after you've eaten a bowl of kix. Yes, I know that's oddly specific, but we all thought that (except for the people who have never tried kix--if you are one of those people you absolutely must go get a box and try it--and even they said it tasted like cereal milk.) The chef gave the students who made the sorbet the recipe, which isn't in our book, I must get it from them or from him. It's so unusual and so delicious I have to make it again. Anyway, everything on the plate was good alone and it all worked together, I was very happy with it.

My plating of the warm hazelnut cake. It's a strange plate,
 but I think I did a pretty good job with it. If you look
closely you can see the caramel tail/spike on the hazelnut...
I think it looks really cool.

Pain Perdu

Our menu project is coming up. I'll explain the project in more detail later, but for now suffice it to say that we have to design a restaurant/bakery, write a menu with at least eight desserts, and prepare two dishes from the menu (chosen by the chefs). Since we have to be able to produce any two dishes we need to, at least in theory, be able to make everything on the menu before we hand it to the chef for him to "order" from. Yikes. I thought it would be a good idea to test out some of the desserts that I was putting on the menu. I knew I wanted a pain perdu--the French name for French toast--on the menu, so I figured I'd practice making it. There are a couple of recipes and techniques I like, so I combined a few to make my own and gave it a shot. Luckily I had slightly stale homemade brioche from fry day. For the menu, I plan on serving the pain perdu with summer fruits or berries but all I had at home was apples, so I sauteed them in butter until they just started to get soft, then added some vanilla sugar to the pan so they got nice and caramelized. I topped the pain perdu with the apples and some good quality, real maple syrup. Since this happened to be breakfast, rather than dessert, I served somewhat larger portions than I will do for the menu. It was great! If the chef orders this, I'll have to try it again with the correct fruit, blackberry sorbet, and a maple blackberry sauce. Ah well, the life of a culinary student can be hard but I suffer through it!

Souffle Day

I have to say I was very nervous about souffle day. Souffles have always seemed so intimidating and the popular portrayal of them as delicate creations that collapse if you look at them wrong. They are finicky don't get me wrong, but they aren't nearly as difficult as I had expected.

We made three different souffles: a chocolate souffle, a fruit souffle, and a savory souffle (in that order). My favorite was the chocolate--not just because it was chocolate, though that helped--my least favorite was the fruit.  I'm going to explain them in reverse order of preference, so I'll save the best for last.

Raspberry souffles piped normally

We had a choice of raspberry or passion fruit for the fruit souffle. My partner and I chose raspberry, which gave the souffle a lovely pale pink hue, not to mention a nice raspberry taste. These souffles rose beautifully and looked really impressive and the berry flavor was nice. The problem was the texture; they were a bit gummy. They were gummy because they have a relatively large amount of pectin in them, which makes them very stable so they rise well. So I guess it's a trade off. I might try them again with a little less pectin, see if I can find a happy medium. By the way, because this is a relatively stiff batter (do you call it batter for a souffle? I'm not sure) we could pipe it above the rim of the ramekin. You see, typically souffle molds (ramekins or another oven safe container) are filled to the top, but not above. That gives souffles their flat top and, if done correctly, their straight necks. With these we made some the classic way, as pictured above, and some a less traditional way. We piped piles of swirled souffle mixture (perhaps that's a better term than batter) on top of a traditional souffle before baking it. That way they looked like a fancy and really impressive twist on a cupcake:

We served them with creme anglaise and chocolate sauce.

Smoked Salmon Souffle

The savory souffle we made was really flexible. It is a béchamel sauce base so you can flavor it however you want. We could use cheese or smoked salmon. I opted for the salmon because I love it but I don't get it very often. It cooks a little bit in the souffle which is nice, especially for some of my classmates who didn't like the texture of fresh smoked salmon.  It was quite good, but mine didn't rise as much as I would have liked, it just sort of domed instead. Ah well. We served them with a small side salad, yum!

Chocolate souffle with the chocolate sauce poured in.

Finally, the chocolate souffle. This was amazing. They tasted almost like a rich chocolate brownie, with a texture something like a mousse-y, molten chocolate cake. They didn't get as much hight as the fruit souffles, but they did rise nicely. We served them with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Traditionally, just before eating the souffle you (or the server who brings it) cut a hole in the top of a souffle and pour the sauce in. It's really good! The barely sweet, slightly vanilla-y, cool whipped cream was delicious with the rich, sweet, warm, dark chocolate souffle. I'm so happy with souffle day!

Fry Day on a Wednesday

Bomboloni with Caramel Ice Cream and a Trio of Sauces

Today was fry day--everything we made was deep fried. It was a good day, even if I did smell like oil and look all greasy after. We made brioche dough last class so we could fry up some bomboloni. We also made some sweet wontons and fruit beignets. Everything was great!

Bomboloni with Raspberry Coulis and Chocolate Sauce

The bomboloni were almost as good as the ones Jacques Torres made at his recent demo. I think they would have been as good had I not let the dough over proof slightly. We filled them with vanilla and chocolate pasty cream. I opted for making mostly chocolate ones. I also made one shaped like a doughnut without filling. We served them with raspberry coulis, chocolate sauce, and vanilla creme anglaise and caramel ice cream. They are also incredible plain, or served simply with one or two sauces.

Beignets with Spiced Nuts, Coconut Foam,
and Tamarind Ice Cream

The beignets are not traditional New Orleans-style beignets as far as I know (I've never had beignets in New Orleans). They are large pieces of fruit, dipped in a yeasted beer batter, and dunked in a deep fryer. My favorite were the apple rings (which we cut horizontally and cored, so they resembled very thick onion rings or, perhaps, doughnuts). We served these with delicious spiced nuts, coconut foam, and tamarind ice cream. Tamarind has a sour taste that is quite unusual but in a good way. I didn't like the ice cream on its own very much, but with one of the nuts or a bite of beignet, it was quite pleasant.

Apple Wontons with Apple Cider Dipping Sauce

The wontons were great! I made the apple compote for the whole class (we divvy up tasks and I got that), which was really good practice as I haven't made a compote in a while. Plus Chef said I could flavor it however I wanted so I had some fun with that. I digress. So we filled wonton wrappers with the apple compote and fried them. We served them with a hard apple cider dipping sauce. Gosh they were good.

Brioche

Bomboloni are made with brioche dough. Well we could only fry up so many, so we made brioche loaves with the rest. Mine was slightly over proofed, which is why the top isn't quite evenly shaped. Ah well it was still brioche, so yum!

Strudel

Sorry, I completely forgot to take a photo of the whole
strudel, but you get the picture! This is the apple strudel,
by the way.

Today we made strudel! It's not an easy dough to make, but it's really amazing. You start with a simple dough that forms a ball roughly the size of a softball (I think, sports analogies aren't really my thing) and you stretch it on a pristine white tablecloth until it is ridiculously thin and about three feet by three feet. It's amazing! We made three baked strudels: apple, grape, and cherry. My favorite was the apple, but the cherry was really nice. We also made steamed semolina strudels. Those weren't very good. Although when we experimented and sauteed a few of them, they were actually quite nice.

We called these plated desserts, but didn't end up officially plating any. I think they would be really excellent with vanilla ice cream or perhaps a caramel swirl ice cream (for the apple strudel). They were great on their own though, so I don't mind.