Showing posts with label plated dessert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plated dessert. Show all posts

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Savory Inspired Plated Dessert


The basil and candied pine nut ice cream was very good, but as with any ice cream it is better as an accompaniment to dessert. In this case I used white cake I'd had in the freezer (I toasted it slightly to refresh it) and just a drizzle of really good extra virgin olive oil. If I'd been planning this I'd have made Thomas Keller's madeline cake (I really must post about that, it is delicious) and some sort of citrus olive sauce, probably thickened with xanthan gum. Still, it was a delicious dessert--and not just for something thrown together on a whim.

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Sixtieth Birthday Party


My pops turned 60 earlier this month. We threw him a big surprise party. And even with all the cooking and preparation we did, he (shockingly) was surprised! We really went all out too; it's quite something that we still managed to surprise him.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Brownies with Citrus Salad


I tried the brownie recipe from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc. It's not the simplest brownie recipe, but it's well worth the extra effort. They were perfect. Richly chocolaty, tender, fudgy but still extraordinarily light. Oh gosh.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Caramelized Waffles and Chocolate-Hazelnut Ice Cream


I bought myself a small Breville waffle maker for the holidays. It's a great waffle maker! So great that I have made far too many waffles. So I froze some. To heat them up I coated them with cinnamon sugar and fried them. They got all nice and caramelized and toasty warm. I served them with homemade ice cream.

The ice cream was amazing. It's a creamy chocolate and sour cream ice cream base (from the New York Times food section) with some toasted hazelnuts and a dash of Frangelico added in for good measure. I didn't add much liqueur because it can interfere with the freezing point of the ice cream, but with Frangelico on top of the hazelnuts, a little went a long way. This was, hands down, the best batch of ice cream I've ever made, and I've made some good ones. I think it was the sour cream. You couldn't taste it at all (which was good, sour cream would have been all wrong with the hazelnuts) but it made the texture unbeatable.

Plated all together, the warm, crisp waffles and the cold, creamy ice cream were just perfect! (Happy New Year, by the way.)

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Gluten Free Desserts, Sightseeing, and my Dissertation

I stayed with my cousins for the last couple weeks of dissertation writing. I can't thank them enough for putting me up and putting up with me during such a stressful time. In an attempt to thank them, I baked quite a bit for them. Below follows a stream of consciousness post including some gluten free baking and some miscellaneous non-food photos.

 

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Glazed Pumpkin Scones


I'm sure I've mentioned these before. They are Alice's Tea Cup's famous pumpkin scones. I've made them before and they didn't work quite right. This time around I paid more attention. They add absurd amounts of spices. I'm sure they taste delicious with a 1/4 cup of each type of spice (cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger, if I remember correctly), but that quantity of spices costs a lot of money. The first time I cut down the spices and the dough was far too moist. This time I used about 1/8 cup of each spice and topped each up with 1/8 cup flour (so there was still the same amout of dry ingredients). I also added about 1/8 cup extra flour since it was a damp day. That was about right and the dough was usable, though still on the wet and sticky side. It was a bit of a pain to work with, but the scones rose and cracked perfectly (they look just like the ones at Alice's) so I wouldn't add any more flour.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

The Best of 2013


It's that time. The time to look back over the previous twelve months and see where you've been and what's happened in your life, both good and bad. For me 2013 is the year I started grad school. It's also the year I made a wedding (okay, anniversary) cake for a real couple, crafted a TARDIS out of chocolate cake, made hundreds of chocolates for the holidays, and so much more. So here's to 2013.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Thanksgivukkah


As I'm sure you heard, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah overlapped this year (on the 28th of November), a rare occurrence that (apparently) complicated things for American Jews who had to have celebrations two nights in a row. Since I'm currently studying in the UK, I had class on Thursday until 6:00pm, so no chance of a proper Thanksgiving regardless of the timing of Hanukkah. So we combined both celebrations and pushed them until Saturday so that our British family (who had to work Friday) could come over, enjoy the day, celebrate Hanukkah and, of course, eat lots of turkey.

Friday, October 18, 2013

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.)

Friday, August 23, 2013

White Chocolate, Blackberry and Lime Eton Mess


As I understand it, Eton mess was first served at Eton and was a messy dessert of strawberries (or bananas) and cream (or possibly ice cream). Later they started adding meringue to the dessert and thus the dessert we know today--meringue, strawberries, and lightly whipped cream--was born.

I love traditional Eton mess with strawberries, but I decided that after our dinner of onion tart and filet mignon I couldn't just serve plain old strawberries and cream. I decided to substitute blackberries for the strawberries. That's not really much of a change so I figured I'd add some white chocolate (it's so good with blackberries) to the whipped cream. But white chocolate crème d'or, no matter how delicious, mixed with blackberries is no longer Eton mess. So I whipped up some cream with a bit of lime juice and zest (both pretty and delicious) and folded the meringue pieces into that.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Eating Out


Sorry I've been offline. I've been on vacation with limited Internet access. In the spirit of being on holiday I've been eating out. A lot. At some very nice restaurants.

It's been strange being back in NYC as a tourist, but nice because I've never had an excuse to eat at Bar Boulud, Jean-Georges' Nougatine, and Cafe Fiorello over the course of only two days--lunch, lunch, dinner. (The excuse was actually my mom's birthday, but if we'd been living in the City we certainly would have had at least one of the meals at home.)

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Individual Berry Crumbles


My mom has always loved Nigella Lawson's jumble berry crumble recipe. So from time to time I make a crumble mixture and leave it in the freezer so I can toss it on top of a ramekin of frozen berries and have dessert with almost no effort. Generally, I do this in the winter since I serve it hot out of the oven.

But then I thought about it and realized that a crumble would be the perfect use for fresh berries that were maybe getting a little sad. My cousin was coming over for dinner so I needed a gluten free dessert and my strawberries weren't fresh enough for Eton mess (the dessert I'd planned to make). What a perfect opportunity to test my theory.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Fudgy Brownies


These incredibly fudgy brownies are from the Desserts Le Champignon Sauvage's dessert cookbook. They are meant to be the base for a whole chocolate brownie bar, so they are quite thin and don't really hold together well. That's okay though, they are delicious. The texture is deliciously fudgy and the flavor is pungently chocolaty with just a hint of sea salt. I had a little left over mocha buttercream in the fridge so I put a little bit on it, topped with some raspberries and voila, a delicious plated dessert.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Cardamom Blondies


These cardamom blondies--from the Fat Witch Bakery cookbook--were incredible! They are moist and tender on the inside and cake-y on the edges with a slightly flakey crust on the top. The were sweet and tasted strongly of brown sugar and cardamom--sort of like a delicious cup of chai tea with milk and honey. I made them because thought they sounded like they would be nice, but they were really quite delicious.

As for serving them, they are great out of the pan, hold the plate. But they were also nice with a cup of coffee or (unsurprisingly) chai tea. My favorite way was with vanilla frozen yogurt and lightly toasted cashew nuts. I really like cashews and the slight Indian influence of the cardamom paired nicely with them. Yum!

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

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!

Thursday, May 17, 2012

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.

Monday, May 14, 2012

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.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

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.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

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

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

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.