Plated Desserts

We are getting back into some plated desserts this week.  We haven't done any since Basic.  Yesterday we made a chocolate fondant with orange ginger syrup and stem ginger ice cream.  In Great Britain, a soft-centered chocolate cake is referred to as chocolate fondant.  It has nothing to do with the fondant that is used to decorate cakes.  If done correctly this cake has a gooey center.  We also made ice cream.  Well, a couple people made the creme anglaise and put it in the ice cream machine.  The orange dots on the plate are the orange ginger syrup and the brown dots are chocolate.  There are a couple spiral pieces of caramel that I made on top of the fondant that are hard to see.  The fondant was delicious.  I love the gooeyness (probably not a word, but I like it).    

Chocolate Fondant with Orange Ginger Syrup and (Melting) Stem Ginger Ice Cream

We also made tarte tatin which is upside down caramelised apple tart.  The cream on the plate is creme anglaise.  I made the caramel basket thing sitting on the tart.  I don't really like apple tart/pie. Turning it upside down doesn't make it taste any better to me. But if you like apple tart, you would really like this.

Tarte Tatin

Today's practical was a little different than normal.  Usually we either work individually or in pairs.  Today we worked in groups of four or five.  Together we had to get two sets of desserts ready and then we each plated one of each dessert.  My group of four worked very well together and I really enjoyed working this way.  The exotic fruit mousse is sponge cake wrapped around exotic mousse with a red jelly and another piece of sponge in the middle of the mousse.  The "exotic" mousse is made with banana, peach, passion fruit, and mango purees.  The jelly was also melted down to put on top.  We got to melt and color some isomalt (artificial sugar) to use for decoration.  This was a nice light dessert and it looks so pretty too. 

Exotic Fruit Mousse

We also made a raspberry custard tartlet with sabayon on the side.  We used puff pastry instead of our usual tart pastry dough.  I chose to not put the raspberry compote on the tartlet because the juice would run all over.  The pieces on my tartlet and in the sabayon are more of the isomalt.  Sabayon is made from egg yolks, sugar, and sweet wine.  I liked this tartlet better than some of the tarts we have made.  I like that we used puff pastry and I like the custard we made.

Raspberry Custard Tartlet