Aluminum Chef

A few weeks ago our class was challenged with an aluminum chef competition. It featured a secret ingredient, and we had 3 ½ hours to make a plated dessert that featured that secret ingredient. We were also given a market basket that included two items that we had to include in our dessert. The competition was called aluminum chef, because we have not graduated to the iron chef level. The secret ingredient was peanuts! My partner and I also had Asian pears and honey in our market basket. Pictured below is the dessert that we made for the aluminum chef challenge. We created a Peanut Butter Ice cream Sandwich with honey poached Asian pears with a honey sauce. The ice cream was made with ground peanuts that had most of their fat removed, we also swirled sweetened peanut butter throughout the ice cream. We made gingersnap cookies for the sandwich. To assemble the sandwich we placed a layer of the honey poached Asian pears on one cookie, and topped it with the ice-cream and another cookie. The peanut butter ice-cream was awesome! We did not win because our dessert was hard to eat with a fork due to the crisp cookies. The dessert would have been more successful if we had plated it to encourage the customer to pick up the ice-cream sandwich and eat it with their hands. We could have done this by standing the sandwich upright or wrapping the sandwich with parchment paper. It was a fun and exciting challenge!

Chef's Masterpiece

Pictured above is the reproduction of the dessert that our chef instructor made for the national pastry championship. It consists of a Banana Pudding Cake, served warm, with a yogurt banana sorbet, a pecan dentelle, on top of the cake underneath the sorbet, and a chicory sauce. The dessert is finished off with a circular tuille cookie that is very fun to shape!

Hazelnuts

Poire Belle Helene is a classical dessert, which consists of a poached pear, chocolate sauce and vanilla ice-cream. Pictured above is our twist on the classic dessert. We infused cinnamon into the pear by having real cinnamon on the poaching liquid, and made a cinnamon chocolate sauce. The ice-cream we served it with was hazelnut. We used real cinnamon which is the bark off of the cinnamon tree. The cinnamon sticks that are commonly found used, are not the real thing!

Huckleberry Financier

Huckleberries grow wild in the Pacific Northwest, and are usually harvested during late summer and at higher elevations during the fall season. They are a small blue/red berry that resembles a blueberry, and has a comparable flavor. We folded huckleberries into the financier dough. Financiers are a small cake that is usually served at the end of a dessert on a mignardise platter. Financiers are made by first browning butter; butter is browned by slowly melting the butter and allowing the milk solids to brown. These milk solids caramelize and add flavor to the butter. Financiers also have almond flour, and are lightened by a meringue. These financiers were like a kicked up version of a blueberry/huckleberry muffin. We served this financier with a quenelle of mascarpone, a warm fruit salad, a tuille cookie and huckleberry sauce!

Deep Fried Desserts

Deep fried desserts are served a la minute, which means that they are served directly after they are cooked. This involves organization between the pastry kitchen and the servers, as the dish needs to go directly out to the kitchen. The dessert pictured below is Zepploe doughnuts served with a cherry soda. Zeppole doughnuts are Italian and have ricotta cheese in the dough. They are rolled in powdered sugar immediately after they come out of the oven. A unique fact about doughnuts is that they naturally turn when being deep fried. Usually you have to flip a doughnut over to allow it to cook on both sides. The doughnuts are served with cherry soda, which we made! It consists of cherry puree mixed with a simple syrup and diluted with sparkling water just before it is served! We served this dessert with a cherry sauce and brandied cherries. Brandied cherries are soaked in so much brandy that they contain the following on the label “only for professional use.”
The other deep fried dessert that we made was Cannolis. Cannolis are not normally served as a dessert. They are usually found in a bakery and are fried and rolled up and then stuffed with a ricotta filling. To make the cannoli more exciting we cut out circles of the cannoli dough and deep fried them. When they came out of the fryer we did not roll them up but kept them flat. We then sandwiched two together with the ricotta filling, dusted the top with powdered sugar and served it with raspberry sauce and lemon sorbet.

Creamy Concoctions - Custards

English Trifle is a tradition around my house at Christmas time, pictured below is a variation of English Trifle as a plated dessert. The variation of English Trifle that we made was Strawberry Trifle. We layered currant jam on the bottom of the jar with chiffon cake, fresh strawberries and vanilla pudding. The trifle was chilled and then topped with sweetened whipped cream. The main aspect of English Trifle is that the layers of cake are soaked in Sherry…and I do mean soaked!

Pot de Crème was the other custard that we made, and literally translated from French this dessert is called pots of cream. These custards have been flavored with the same spices, but in different methods. The pot de crème on the right has had cinnamon, allspice and cloves infused by steeping them with the cream. The pot de crème on the left was infused by cooking the spices in the sugar that we had caramelized. The pot de crème that was infused via the caramelized sugar had a “pumpkin pie” flavor, while the milk infused pot de crème had a lighter flavor. The two pot de crèmes were served side by side in order for the guest to compare their flavors.

If you are looking for something healthy on a dessert menu, I would recommend the dessert pictured below, which is a citrus panna cotta. Panna cotta is made with milk and thickened with gelatin and not eggs. Panna cotta has a similar consistency as an egg custard but without the calories. We also garnished our desserts with tuile cookies that we piped in a thin strip and then wrapped around a chopstick to make a curly cookie!