Plated Desserts

So for the past two weeks, we’ve basically been learning how to arrange components of a dessert onto a plate to make them look pretty, like what you would receive ordering a dessert at a nice restaurant. We talked about plate size, shape, and color, and how that interacts with the dessert as a whole. Turns out, there’s a lot of thought that goes into each component! Not to mention thought that goes into creating a dessert itself – it’s important to incorporate several different textures, temperatures, heights, flavors, etc.

**Some of these pictures are not my dishes, but are Chef’s plates from demonstration. We aren’t usually allowed to have our phones in class, and since the dishes that incorporate ice cream pretty much start melting the second you scoop the ice cream onto the plate, it’s not even worth trying to capture a nice picture before digging right in.

One of my favorite plates from this unit was a Pear Financier dish. First, we poached pears in a bunch of spices, vanilla, and white wine. The next day, we baked them on top of a hazelnut financier batter (which is basically a super delicious almond, hazelnut cake batter) with one pear half standing up and the other fanned out in front, until they were dark, golden brown, brushed the whole thing with a little pear glaze from the poaching liquid, and topped with confectioner’s sugar, herbs, a pear chip, and some hazelnut ice cream (admittedly, very much NOT my favorite ice cream. But everything else about the plate is drool-worthy.)

Chef’s Pear Financier

Another one of my favorite dishes was a dark chocolate molten lava cake with coffee ice cream. We talked about the importance of using the resources you have, like a lid from a plastic bucket, to create shapes, stencils, and molds for your desserts, as is the cutout of a spoon on this dish for the cocoa powder.

Mine: “Chocolate Lover’s Obsession” cake with Coffee Ice Cream, Coffee print, and Dark chocolate curl

Chef’s Chocolate-Lemon cremeux

Below was probably my favorite plate presentation from this week. We were assigned to make certain components: Chocolate cremeux (cream), lemon cream, chocolate sauce, and chocolate streusel, and then plate it however we want. Chef’s example is to the left, in the tall glass. But my partner and I decided to add a bit more gelatin than Chef used into the chocolate cremeux so we could make something a little different and mold it into the dome you see. Then we sat it on top of the lemon cream dotted with chocolate sauce, and then surrounded the dome with the chocolate streusel. When we presented our dish to Chef, she said it “Looks very nice!!!”…. which is a huge compliment coming from her. Phew! 

Below are more desserts from this unit:

Chef’s Red Wine Stew with Poached Plums, Spiced Ice Cream, and Linzer Tart

 

Chef’s Cappuccino Crème Brulee with Hazelnut and Pecan Biscotti

 

 

 

Chef’s Red Rhubarb Soup with Strawberry Sorbet and banana crisp

 

 

 

Chef’s Vanilla Chiboust with Fresh berries, and honey wheat tuile

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mine: “Citrus Soup” with Honey Ice Cream, served in a Grapefruit Tuile, topped with a pulled sugar curl

Mine: this is a super classic French Crêpe Suzette. Lots of orange and butter flavor!

Mine: Almond Milk Flan with berries and drizzled caramel decoration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the other recipes that I unfortunately do not have any pictures of included a vanilla-roasted pineapple with mango sorbet, Madelines, Classic chocolate and vanilla French soufflés, and a warm “Papillotte” (wrapped up warm parchment paper package) of fresh fruit, topped with strawberry sorbet and spiced tuiles.

We had Chef En-Ming Hsu again for this unit (same chef from our chocolate candies unit) and next week we have Chef Jacquy again for our sugar candies module! Gummy candies are my favorite candy out there, so you could say I’m prettyyyyy excited to learn how to make my own gummy bears 😉