After the break, we had one more week of plated desserts, and I was quite happy with what we made. Our Chef Instructor used to be the Pastry Chef at The French Laundry, so many recipes were out of that repertoire. When I first bought TFL Cookbook, there were many desserts that I wanted to make from it, so it was fun to see them come to life around me in the school’s kitchen.

L’il Floating Islands. This was made with a creme anglaise with maple sugar substituted for regular sugar, swiss meringues baked in milk until firm to the touch, and sauteed bacon. To make the eggshell cups, you saw off the top 1/3 or so of a lengthwise egg, and carefully remove the membrane within (it helps to keep the shell underwater while doing so) and then wash and dry them. It was hard to get the edges smooth and even, though, without gradually tearing the whole shell down. It takes a very light touch.

And they were amazing — smooth… maple-y sweet.. with soft meringue… and the crunchy and salty bacon. Very refreshing. I could have eaten a whole bowlful, one eggshell at a time.

We were also asked to come up with a small-bite dessert based on a photo of a soup with a skewer of its deconstructed ingredients balanced on top of it. Our group came up with the Snickers Shooter. Originally, I had the Caramel Soup from Cyrus in mind, and since I always thought that it would have been better as a small serving, I wanted to make it in something like a shot glass. But a lack of popping corn kernels led us to consider other ingredients, and we decided to put nougat ice cream (vanilla base with honey and an infusion of peanuts) in a very small cup, put a small lattice of chocolate piped from a paper cone on top, top that with salted honey roasted peanuts, and then pour caramel sauce over it all, so that the lattice would melt and it would be like a shot of dessert soup. I loved the way it tasted (like a Snickers), and it had a nice mix of textures and temperatures. The only problem was that it could not be taken as a shot — no matter how long you tilted the cup and your head back– but eating it with a spoon was fine.

Red Sugar Beet Ice Cream with a Bittersweet Chocolate Cake and Candied Walnuts. The cake also had beet juice in it, just like in the olden days, so a forkful of this dessert meant a mouthful of beet. I like beets, so I happy with it and even happier that this was better than my beet quickbread — I knew beet cake could work somehow. The beet chips were also very good — after being sliced thin on the meat slicer, they were dredged in flour, deep-fried at 300F, and seasoned with conf sugar and salt.

We also tried to make a Goat Cheese-Thyme Gelato to pair with the beet ice cream, but no matter how we tried to get rid of the chalkiness and iciness, it just wouldn’t work (though I’ve since found recipes online that look promising…). The taste of it was fantastic, though. It couldn’t be served to paying customers, of course, but I couldn’t stop taking little bites. And by the way, I realize that once you come up with pairing goat cheese-thyme gelato with beet ice cream, you’ve probably passed a very special culinary point of no return.

Coconut Cake with Roasted Pineapple, Coconut Cream, Royal Icing Cookie, and Passionfruit Sauce (lemon curd, passionfruit puree, vanilla sauce). This picture was taken in a hurry before all of the elements were added, but I’m okay with that, because in truth, what I would really want a picture of is the cake alone by itself, because it was so light and good and flavorful that I’d be happiest eating it plain. It has coconut milk mixed into it, and we used Rose Levy Beranbaum’s technique of mixing the dry ingredients first and then adding the wet.

Our poor, disturbed Strawberry Sorbet Shortcake with Creme Fraiche Sauce. If you turn to page 277 in TFL cookbook, you’ll see how this should really look. We made strawberry sorbet and strawberry ice cream, but we couldn’t quite get both to fit under the rather small biscuit and balance on the diced strawberries within. And then it all melted. It tasted great, though.

We had 4 days of plated desserts that week, and then the 5th day was our very own Aluminum Chef Competition (because we’re not quite at Iron level yet…). More on that soon.

This practical, which was just over a month ago, was our most interesting yet. Instead of being given a stock list of items to produce individually, teams of two were assigned a theme for a restaurant and had to design a five-item dessert menu for it. We had to make seven of each dessert to serve to invited guests who in turn gave written evaluations about them, although the chef was still in charge of grading. I really like this idea for a practical — it’s a lot more fun than the standard format.

Our assigned concept was “Overpriced Napa Bistro.” Although we may know that kind of place well, it was still a challenge to come up with a balanced, seasonal, and varied menu ourselves for the first time, and a really good experience. From the categorical point of view, the dishes that we came up with can be summed up in a word each for me: nuts, chocolate, cake, cheese, and frozen. And of course, there’s overlap. And they were all priced at $10 each, ‘cuz we’re overpriced.

We created LuXe Bistro, a French bistro in a restored historic building in St. Helena that was supposed to be elegant, but definitely still a bistro, not fine dining. Over all, I think our desserts turned out rather well to match our concept. I liked how all of them tasted, even though there were a couple plating quirks. We practiced making a couple of them in advance, but some of them were made for the first time on the day of service (we had the day before to prep, too), and all were completely plated for the first time on the day of.

Half the class plated while half the class served, and then we switched. Service was the hardest, or at least, the most awkward part for me. I know I don’t feel comfortable being waited on at restaurants, so I wanted to be as unobtrusive as possible, but even simple things like putting down knives and forks, and picking up finished plates, and carrying plates of slide-y food, became subjects for impromptu strategy. It was just so weird to stand behind/next to someone and orchestrate what’s going on in front of them. And then to kind of watch them, but not watch them, to see when they’re done felt weird, too.

Anyway, here’s what we made…

De-Luxe Candy Bar - Mixed Nuts, Caramel, Chocolate Sauce, and Cognac Cream.

This recipe was straight out of Sunday Suppers at Lucques for the most part, but it doesn’t quite feel like their’s because it didn’t turn out to be the “chewy, gooey delight” described… Instead, once the gooey caramel began to cool down, it crystallized into a praline-like consistency… Hard, yet crumbly and barely moist. This happened on the prep day, and I was prepared to try again immediately until people started trying it… and really, really liked it. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t cut cleanly the next day because it had hardened a little more, so I made it again… and it crystallized again.

Anyone who’s made caramel knows that crystallization is the enemy and is usually the result of stirring or not brushing down the sides with water. Since I’d made caramel successfully before many times, I was afraid I’d drastically lost my touch, but we seemed to determine that there wasn’t enough dairy in the caramel for it to maintain its gooeyness. It was praline-like when we used 3/4 c cream and very gooey when we used 1 c cream, so somewhere in between there must be an amount that yields a toothsome chewy caramel for that recipe.

Also, I liked using whole nuts in this — I think it makes it more elegant than chopped. Maybe brazil nuts would fit in, too. And I used Flo Braker’s short dough, which tastes so good and vanilla-y. I didn’t like the cognac in the cream, though — it was a little too astringent, so it probably should have been made sweeter or left out altogether.  And the tart was assembled in a long narrow rectangular mold without a bottom, so it could just be cut into candy bar size.
As far as plating goes, this was one was difficult, because I think what this really wants to be is either an individual tartlet in a narrow mold (maybe a barquette) or a flat-out candy bar — as Chad said when I brought him extra slices: “If you coated this in chocolate and put it in a wrapper, you’d make a lot of money.” Either way, it should be eaten with your hands, but that was slightly controversial for a “deluxe bistro,” so we served it with chocolate drizzled on top and cognac whipped cream. The feedback we got was confused about how it was supposed to be eaten, and that’s understandable.

Marquise au Chocolate Noir - Pistachios, Chocolate Raspberries & Zinfandel Raspberry Coulis.

I got the idea for this out of the Bouchon cookbook. I stuffed the raspberries with chocolate, like at The City Bakery, but first the chocolate was too hard from being refrigerated and then melty from being left on the table. I also couldn’t get the sauce to really taste like Zinfandel with what I had, so that was too bad. We were told that the plating was too busy.

Petit Gateau Basque - Local Peaches, Apricot Cream, & Whipped Creme Fraiche.

We have a really great recipe for Gateau Basque at school (even though it’s barely like the ones I’ve had in Basque country), and this was likewise fantastic — moist, creamy, fruit. The cake is quite buttery and almost molten, which somehow gives it a slight almond flavor for me.  Since peaches and apricots go so well with almonds, they were a perfect choice. They were baked in little hollow molds.  My partner did an amazing job with this.

Fraises at Fromage Napoleon - Tarragon Macerated Strawberries, Mascarpone & Goat Cheese.

This was put together from a couple recipes in The Last Course, and I liked it a lot, though it’s not for everyone. The strongest flavors were goat cheese, orange, tarragon, and strawberries, which works for me. The strawberries were very wet, though; they probably should have been cut in bigger pieces and macerated for a shorter time. We included chopped tarragon at the last minute, but turns out that some people found the leaves annoying, like blades of grass. Oops.

Passionfruit Souffle Glace with House-Made Raspberry Sherbert & White Chocolate Sauce.

A souffle glace is made out of a sabayon that has meringue and whipped cream folded into it, and that is then frozen. For some reason, ours didn’t freeze completely, but it was still pretty good. We put the sauce on top of the souffle glace, which gave it a nice finish, but I think it blended in too much to the souffle glace.  I like the flavor combination of white chocolate and passion fruit.

And thanks to M for taking these photos!

We had this block before my two week vacation in France, so I’m a little fuzzy about the details. I also didn’t get to take many pictures, because I didn’t always have time to run down to my locker to get my camera. Instead of putting finished products out on the dessert table near the end of class, we served our desserts during lunchtime to people at the tables, so we were a little more rushed during the time that I usually take my photos. But one thing that I really liked about this block was that we often made new desserts each day, even if we were in a different “section” that other groups had already been in, so rather than making the same desserts that other groups had already made, we usually made variations… it made it more interesting.

I worked alone for the first three days of the class, which was fun and hard; everyone else had a partner. I liked having the responsibility and learning experience of having to make everything myself and seeing how it all turned out, but since I felt so rushed, I didn’t have the chance to really consider what I was doing in detail. I just wanted to get it all done — so it was like having a practical every day. And working alone also meant making obvious stupid mistakes–in hindsight–without the sober input of a partner to stop me… only the concerned look of the chef instructor did that for those three days.

So, this was a challenging block for me. And frustrating… I’ve been fortunate enough to eat at so many amazing restaurants all around the world where I could analyze and enjoy so many beautiful platings, and yet, when it was my turn to put together a plated dessert, I hardly knew where to begin. I tried to formulate the aesthetics in my mind based on shape and color, but the final result was often awkward.

I’ve mentioned the “craving test” for restaurants before, but frankly, the desserts that I crave the most are those from pastry shops that I eat individually at home, on a plate or from the box — no sauces, no garnish… just one thing that is beautiful and delicious all by itself. So, the real challenge of plated desserts was to consider the whole matrix of all that can fit together on a dessert plate — it’s like a puzzle of your own creation… If you can make it work texture, taste, and aesthetic-wise, you could put virtually anything you can imagine on the same dish as whatever else you can imagine; in the abstract, it reminded me a lot of filmmaking in this way. Since I like single pastries, it was by deconstructing those pastries that how I began to see just how plated desserts should be assembled. It’s almost embarrassing, but it wasn’t until the chef instructor gave me the most obvious excellent advice about plating that something clicked somewhat: think about how you want to eat it. After having been so caught up with the geometry of plating, I’d lost track of what matters the most to me: taste. As an example, here is a rum baba that I made and plated.

This was actually one of my cleaner platings, but now when I think about this plate arriving in front of me at restaurant, I know that the first thing I would do would be to pick up my fork and scrape those three blackberries next to the rum baba, and next, I would wonder why there isn’t more blackberry sauce. BUT, since I made this dish, I know just how delicious that rum baba is all by itself (it’s made with a brioche-style pastry that is soaked in a rum, orange, cinnamon, and vanilla syrup, and they turned out just nicely sweet and rum-y, with a rich butter-y at the very finish. We baked them in little savarin molds).

So, thinking about it now, I think I’d want the whipped cream and all the berries on top of the baba, and then the sauce perhaps circled around it, so that you could put put it on your fork if you so chose, or you could just have the baba by itself, as I like it best.

Btw, when I was 19, I ordered a rum baba in a cafe in Vienna, along with a tea with rum (simply because I legally could), and it was a disgustingly overly-rummy experience that gave me a vicious headache, so I wasn’t looking forward to making this… But I’m happy that this recipe resurrected the baba for me.

Toasted Hazelnut Creme Anglaise - Creme Anglaise is a classic dessert sauce that’s generally made out of milk, cream, sugar, yolks, and vanilla; it has a ton of other applications, too, such as being a base for ice cream and bavarian cream. The first time I made anglaise was for a practical a while ago, and the memory of curdled eggs haunts me still — because it curdled both times I tried to make it… after about 15 minutes of cooking each time. So, at this point, I erred on the side of under-cooking it, so this one turned out liquidy, whereas it should hold its own on a plate.

But I’ve had more experience with it since then, and feel more comfortable with it. Basic guidelines:

• To flavor it, you generally infuse the cream and milk and let it steep before possibly reheating it and tempering in your yolks. So, I chopped and toasted the hazelnuts and poured them into the cream and milk (and some sugar and a vanilla bean) before bringing them to a boil and then letting it sit for about 1/2 hour. Then I strained the liquid into a clean pot, and got on with the sauce.
• You have to cook it at a low temperature until the sauce is thickened just right… This happens at 180F, and is called nappe. This is when it is supposed to “coat the back of a spoon,” which is so weirdly specific, yet vague, that it never really helped me out before until the chef instructor explained it. What this really means is that if you dip a wooden spoon into the sauce and hold the handle parallel to the ground and run your finger across also parallel to the ground, then the sauce is ready when it holds the line formed by your finger without running down. Of course, once you are used to seeing what the sauce is supposed to look like at this point, then you don’t have to test it. And thermometers never helped me out… All my failed anglaises apparently curdled by 170.

Warm Chocolate Pudding with Nuss Sauce - This was a steamed pudding cake that involved a batter stabilized with breadcrumbs instead of flour (similar to the custard for the Queen of Puddings). It would have been easy except that taking bread from frozen-solid loaf state to bread crumb state as fast as possible was a little bewildering and time-consuming. I used the anglaise above to make the sauce, which had finely chopped hazelnuts and chocolate in it. I thought it would look messy, but it looks rather nice, almost confetti-like… but I need to figure out how to find the center of plates. Also, I wish this pudding tasted more chocolate-y, rather than nutty and bread-y.

Baked Apple Fruit Coulis - A coulis is a strained sauce. A chinois, which is a very fine, conical strainer, is perfect for this… it annoys me that they’re not more widely available (and cheaper) because they strain so well. The apple should have been baked with the skin on to retain moisture, but I peeled them after a confusing instruction about them. Despite covering them with aluminum foil, they still dried out in the oven. We did a quick fix by microwaving some new apples with the skin on until soft and then finishing them off in the oven. Then the skins were taken off and they were pureed in a blender and mixed with simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water, boiled) to make the sauce.

Cherry Sauce - This was made with dried cherries that were simmered in sugared, spiced wine until soft and then pureed until smooth and strained before added kirsch. The key to coulis seems to be cooking time and blender time because by the time I strained it, virtually nothing was supposed to strain except foam. The skins should have been softened and pulverized fine enough to pass through the chinois.

Red Wine Poached Peaches - These turned out to not be poached enough, even though they seemed to be soft enough when I poked them with my paring knife. It’s also best to let the fruit cool in the poaching liquid, even overnight, for them to soften properly.

And given my plated dessert naivete, it was a kind of a revelation when the chef chopped my peach half in half again to help me plate it — you could never do that with, say, an individual tart to sell.

But, when I look at it now and know that the peach was under-poached, I think it would have made the best sense to serve the peach in the poaching liquid so that as much liquid as possible is eaten with the peach. It may not look exciting, but it would taste better. Serving the poaching liquid as a drink separately in this case just accentuates the under-poached peach, I think.. although it was eye-catching.

Little Fried Pies with Whipped Cream - I’d never deep-fried myself before, and it was a lot less scary than I’d visualized (they just bubbled a little… rather than erupting hot oil all over the place, as I’d feared… but that would really only happen if you put a very water-y thing into oil anyway). Depending on the dessert, the oil should be at about 325F-375F to deep fry; in a pinch, if it gets much hotter, you can add more oil to bring the temp down fast. These were filled an apple fruit mixture, and were like fancied up McDonald’s Apple Pies. They were formed, frozen, and cut into round, crimped edge shapes with a cookie cutter before deep-frying and rolling them in sugar. They tasted great.

Coconut Crusted Banana Tempura - Finer coconut flakes are better then large coconut gratings for this.

We also made fantastic coconut chips to garnish this by dipping thin slices of fresh coconut into simple syrup and baking them until dried out. I forgot to put them on most of the dishes when I was plating them up, though, because they were at the wrong edge of my table. Stupid mistake. I was just so not in the habit of garnishing desserts at that point that I didn’t remember, but for plated, it’s very important to have everything laid out in the order of assembly so that everything gets on and this was a good lesson… I felt bad that the guests missed out on a delicious element because of my simple mistake.

French Toast with Pineapple Flambe - The french toast was so good — so creamy and delicious while still holding its shape. I used brioche pullman loaves, and soaked the pieces for 20 mins. The plating turned out to be a rather horrific, though, with a piled up combination of pineapple triangles and french toast sticks that will forever remind me to really visualize these things in gritty detail before I start going at them with a knife. Taste-wise, I didn’t like pineapple with french toast, and I don’t think I ever like pineapple warm.

Cremes Normandy - The crepe batter needed to be strained.

Peach Crisp with Vanilla Bean Creme Fraiche - Our under-ripe peaches didn’t really soften up, and the tops were burned in half the amount of time that they were supposed to bake in. We didn’t have enough peaches, so we put in some cherries, which was a good combo.

Lemon Souffle with Lemon Sabayon - This was a fun day. The groups making variously flavored souffles and practiced them in the morning… so whenever they were ready, the class was called over for a tasting. Unfortunately, the idea of souffles excites me, but whenever I get them, anywhere, they just taste like flavored, warmed eggs to me; ultimately, I don’t like them.

Edit: To test doneness for a souffle, the side should feel similar to when you press your finger against your eyelid with your eye closed.  And if I remember correctly, I believe that pasta dough should feel like your earlobe and ripe camembert should feel like pinching the end of your nose.

Rosemary-Vanilla Bavarian Cream with Sugar Cookie Base - I wanted the rosemary flavor to be almost like an aromatic accent on the tongue, and it tasted very nice, esp with the strawberry glaze and sugar cookie. We did this in a flan ring, and I think that that the thinner layer of bavarian cream helped make this a very good workhorse sort of a dessert.

Apricot Yogurt Mousse - Basically, an entremet. The cherry gel center never set up, though, even though it seemed to be made correctly and put in the freezer.

Peanut Flour Panna Cotta - Dairy-free, with a base of peanut flour and water. Tasted like raw peanut butter, with an admirable panna cotta consistency. The banana puree went well with it flavor-wise, but the color was too similar for me; honey would have gone well with it, too, but the color would have also been very brown. Oh, and if you put a thin meringue cookie btw the panna cotta and the puree, it’ll melt. Oops. In my defense, I made the puree so that it would hold its shape in a dome on the cookie, and not run everywhere, until right before service, when I was told to thin it. Also, the meringue cookie needs to be separated from the silpat as soon as its done baking.

Bread and Butter Pudding - So good and so easy… I have wonderful memories of having this when I lived in London. Just mix together a custard base, pour it on bread, let it soak, and bake. Eggs shouldn’t be cooked twice for custards, so you wouldn’t want to, say make an anglaise instead and then bake it in a bread pudding, too. And, frankly, I’d much rather bake than anglaise.

Butterscotch Pudding Trifle with Dried Fruit Compote - This was fantastic, and it’s too bad I didn’t get a picture of it. It was layered with orange marmalade, thin discs of sponge cake, whipped cream, and pecans. I made sure to press fruits from the compote against the side of the glass so that they could be seen.

Hazelnut Parfait with Roasted Hazelnuts and Chocolate - This was a parfait in the sense of a frozen dessert that’s made by beating yolks, sugar, and brandy over a double boiler until they form a ribbon, whipping til cool, folding in whipped cream and flavor, and then freezing it.

Apple Sorbet with Apple Cider Granite - We used a refractometer to determine the correct percentage of sugar for the sorbet; it should be 26-28 Brix. Granite is so easy… you just freeze and scrape, and they have a marvelous crystal texture.

Oreo Cookie Ice Cream - Just by folding oreo crumbs into a vanilla ice cream base, you get a seriously good dessert. We made this with a chocolate sauce and a quenelle of whipped cream with a brandied cherry in the center tucked into a curled chocolate tuile. It was adorable and delicious.

Because one night this week, I came home at 7:00 after school, work, and errands, and after googling “sweet napa quick puff,” made a double recipe of Quick Puff Pastry (found here) for an Alsatian tart because it’s so “quick”… Only involving tossing butter and water into the flour and salt, rolling and folding it twice, chilling it 20 minutes, repeating the last two steps again, and then repeatings those steps yet again… while preparing some toppings, and then finally baking it and eating it. I didn’t take pictures… because I was hungry and ate it quickly.

BUT now I have a couple pounds of quick puff pastry wrapped in small pieces in my freezer, which, given the extreme heat in the Napa valley this summer, will defrost in no time for a truly quick dinner or dessert any time I want.

For our current block, we are essentially making plated desserts that you’d find in a restaurant, or at a catered event. So, instead of putting our baked goods out at the dessert buffet at some point before lunch, we plate up about 8 servings of our dishes at the end of our production time and deliver them individually to tables with people finishing up lunch.

The block is divided into two sections — cold desserts and hot desserts…  So, in the mix this time are Red Wine Poached Peaches with Chilled Syrup, Warm Chocolate Pudding with Nuss Sauce, Little Fried Pies, Coconut Crusted Bananas Tempura with Tropical Fruit Salad, French Toast with Pineapple Flambe, Crepes Normandy, Rum Babas, Peach Crisp, Lemon Souffle with Lemon Sabayon…  and then Saffron-Cardamom Bavarian Cream, Apricot Yogurt Mousse, Peanut Flour Panna Cotta, Tuile Cookies, Bread and Butter Pudding with Warm Raisin Sauce, Butterscotch Pudding Trifle, Hazelnut Parfait with Roasted Hazelnuts and Chocolate, Apple Cider Granite, Oreo Cookies Ice Cream, and Apple Sorbet.

Instead of a normal practical exam at the end, we’ll be working with a partner to design our own dessert menus for a fictional restaurant and serve the desserts to invited guests.   Our theme is Overpriced Napa Bistro…