Plated Dessert for the Jewish Holidays

I made this dessert (honey milk chocolate semifreddo on apple almond cake with caramel apple sauce, milk chocolate almond bark, marzipan and nougatine) for the Yom Kippur break-fast meal this year. Yom Kippur was in mid-September, but I guess with all the excitement of starting school, I forgot to post this.

The beautiful thing about this dessert is it could be for almost any Jewish holiday! I had been away from home for Rosh Hashanna so I decided to use the traditional flavors from that holiday--apple and honey--as inspiration for my dessert. Since some of my cousins can't eat gluten- the whole dessert is gluten free and is therefore suitable for Passover (obviously if you keep Kosher there are other considerations besides leavened goods and flour, but in my household that's pretty much the extent of Passover.)

Pan Fried Ravioli

I'm not sure fried is the best word for these; they are really sautéed ravioli. Basically, I cooked lovely, fresh, asparagus ravioli very al dente--about 2/3 of the normal cooking time. Then I gently drained them, put the still steaming hot ravioli in a pan with just a thin coat of olive oil, and cooked them on one side then the other until they were just golden and a bit crispy. Then I just drained them on a paper towel and served them with some marinara sauce. I think the tiny amount of oil I used means they weren't fried, but it didn't really feel like sautéing. They really don't teach you the exact definition of either in pastry school. Whatever I did to them, they were delicious and a really lovely appetizer! I think I will try this with different ravioli--perhaps pumpkin--soon.

Chocolate Dipped Breadsticks

A few years ago Carluccio's, a restaurant chain in the UK, stopped selling chocolate dipped breadsticks. That was probably good since they were addictive and not exactly healthy. But I've always missed them and decided I had to try to recreate them. I suppose I could make homemade grissini (and I will try that some day) but for now I figured I'd purchase them. This was not as easy as I would have thought. I wanted plain grissini, no cheese, no cornmeal on the outside, no herbs, nothing. As it turns out, that's not so easy to find. Finally I did find some lovely, skinny, plain breadsticks. I tempered some bittersweet chocolate (61% dark chocolate if I remember correctly--I might have to get some cocoa butter, the chocolate was a bit thick) and dipped the breadsticks in the chocolate, leaving on a bit undipped on the end to hold it by. They were as good as I remember them! (I suppose you can't go wrong with bread dipped in chocolate, though.)

Hazelnut Chocolate Tiramisu

This is a twist on a classic Italian tiramisu. I used Frangelico instead of Marsala and added layers of grated bittersweet chocolate on top of every layer of sabayon. The Frangelico sabayon was a bit sweeter than the the classic Marsala so I didn't sweeten the espresso for the lady fingers as much as normal and I ended up grating bittersweet chocolate between the layers. The chocolate helped cut the sweetness a bit and upped the chocolaty-ness of the tiramisu, so it was aces in my book!

Since I figured I'd give some of the tiramisu away, I decided to use small, clear, plastic cups to make portable individual servings rather than making one large thing that I'd have to slice or scoop up. I think I may have to try this again in mini chocolate cups--it'll be delicious and cute!

Another photo!

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.

Tiramisu

Tiramisu means pick me up. Apparently this name came from the days when women cafes during the day. It was considered uncouth for a woman to drink in public (while men, of course, could) so they would order this cake spiked with marsala wine and coffee--quite a pick me up.

We served our tiramisu--made with lady fingers soaked in an espresso syrup between layers of zabaglione (aka sabayon) made with marsala wine and lightened with whipped cream--with a healthy dusting of cocoa powder, coffee creme anglaise, chocolate sauce, a tuile, and coffee granita served in a chocolate bowl. Each element was delicious alone and even better together. And how cute is the little tuile spoon sticking out of the granita?!

Panna Cotta

I'm not a fan of panna cotta; it's too jiggly. But considering that, this did taste nice. It is made with buttermilk, sugar (in the mixture and as caramel on top), heavy cream, and gelatin, so really it can't taste too bad, even if the texture is too wiggly for my liking. This was topped with mango compote and reisling granita, which was incredible!

By the way, a granita is a frozen dessert similar to a snocone. It's made by freezing a not-too-sugary typically alcohol based liquid solid and then scraping it to create flakes of icy goodness.