Petits Fours:Week One

        What do you think when you hear petit fours? Little cakes with icing(well actually fondant) on them, right? That is what I thought as well. This past week we started petit fours class and learned that they are just mini desserts. Well, not just mini desserts but delicious desserts.

 

Dacquoise

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 This is a meringue type of cookie. It is a meringue with hazelnut powder folded in. They are filled with a hazelnut cream.

Paris Brest

A Paris-Brest is made with Pate a Choux. It is filled with a hazelnut pastry cream mixed with buttercream.  It was invented in 1910 cycling race from Paris to Brest. The shape represents the wheels of the bicycle. 

         Chouquette








A chouquette is made with pate a choux and is  just like a cream puff. This one is filled with a hazelnut pastry cream.

        
              Salambos


A salambos is another pastry made with pate a choux. It is filled with a kirsch pastry cream and topped with caramel.

          Eclairs















This is one of my favorite pastries! I am so glad we got to make these. These eclairs are filled with a chocolate pastry cream.

                                      

       Blueberry Tarts














These are the smallest tarts I have ever made, but they are so cute and easy to make. But, I do have to say they are not the same as when my mom makes them with blueberries from my grandpap's house.







This is a cookie with chocolate ganache and raspberry jam.

Apricot and Almond Cream Tart

                                                                                                   

 Macarons

These macarons are flavored with pistachio buttercream!

Plated Desserts:Week Two

                   
                     
                          Citrus
                   Soup

 The citrus soup was mad with made with orange and grapefruit supremes and the juice from the oranges and grapefruit. It was served with honey ice cream and a grapefruit tuile.

                   
           Almond 
                Flan






It may be called a flan, but it was really an almond flavored panna cotta. It was served with berry water and fresh fruits, and a Florentine tuile.

   
       
         Pear
           Financier








The warm financier was served with hazelnut ice cream and a pear chip.It would go very well with a vanilla bean,  french vanilla, or spiced ice cream.

                                                                             
                                                                         

                    Cappuccino
              Creme Brulee



This was one of my favorite desserts! I love creme brulee and coffee, so I heard I was we were making this I was so excited!! We added a spoon full of chocolate cream, topped with cream chantilly and a hazelnut/pecan biscotti.

    Red
        Wine
             Stew




Plums, cherries, blueberries and other fruits were cooked in red wine to create a light syrup.
It was served with spice ice cream and a Florentine tuile. I was so happy because this was the first time that I was able to actually scoop the ice cream in the egg shape like this. It took so many desserts and so many tries that I finally got it down. Once you think about the technique and practice at it, it actually is not as I thought it was. Practice makes prefect!




            Crepe 
                   Suzette





Crepe Suzette is traditionally made with an orange butter and a flambe with orange liquor





      Chocolate -Tea
              Cremeux







This dessert is made up of four components, a chocolate cremeux, lemon cream(with a citrus jelly), earl grey tea ice cream, and a chocolate streusel. It was supposed to have a chocolate sauce,but with so much chocolate and the chocolate cremeux had a very strong chocolate flavor we decided to leave it off.

I Scream, You Scream,We All Scream For Ice Cream!

Ice cream week was one of the most stressful weeks that we have had so far. Stress came from the time table that we had and of course the fact that we were new at not only making ice cream cakes, but ice cream in general. In the kitchen each person needs to always work fast, yet efficient. Well, this definitely applied to ice cream week. We had to work very fast and communicate with the rest of the class or else the ice cream would melt.




                                                                                             
                                                                                     Pineapple                     Surprise

  A hallowed out pineapple filled with candied pineapple, raspberry coulis, and pineapple sorbet.

        
   
  Vacherin 

                   Ice Cream

                                 Cake

 This is actually a sorbet cake! There are layers of mango and raspberry sorbet in between to meringue bases and topped with whipped cream!

Hazelnut 
          Daquoise
                       Ice Cream Cake

Chocolate and caramel ice cream in between to hazelnut meringue. The hazelnut meringue was very interesting. Since it had hazelnut TPT(nut flour and powdered sugar) and hazelnut powder it had a cake like feel to it.















                                 


Raspberry and
         Vanilla Parfait








This had a Raspberry coulis topped with a vanilla semifredo, plus chocolate ice cream and a sable dough cookie on the bottom.

Plated Desserts: Week One

      

      Vanilla
             Chiboust

A Chiboust is pastry cream mixed with a meringue.
We made a berry mix with strawberries and raspberries. It is finished with a brulee top and a honey wheat tuile.

       
         
         
         Roasted
                Pineapple 

The roasted pineapple was paired with mango sorbet and a pineapple chip.

 A Classic 
    French Style
               Souffle 

       Warm 
          Papillote

A papillote is dessert where food(in this case fruit) is cooked in parchment paper and served hot.

This papillote had bananas, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, pineapple, and strawberries. It was served with strawberry sorbet and spice tuile.











            

          Creme 
            Caramel










Creme Caramel is a custard based dessert with caramel on top. It was served with creme chantilly(whipped cream).
                                                                

              
               

          Red
             Rhubarb
                     Soup



The soup ws topped with strawberry sorbet and a banana tuile.






Chocolate
        Lover's 
                Obsession











The chocolate lover's obsession, or more commonly known as molten lava cake was served with coffee ice cream and a  creme angelaise sauce

Like a Kid in a Candy Store

               

    Nougat

1. A candy made from sugar or honey, nuts, and egg white.

The first one(above) we made was a plain nougat with almonds and pistachios.

The second one(to the right) we made was a chocolate nougat with almonds

and pistachio. The chocolate one was delicious and almost tasted like fudge!

Pate 

      de 

           Fruit

These are called pate de fruit. They are chewy fruit candy made with fruit puree.  

The orange are Passion fruit- Apricot.

The really dark purple are Pear-Cassis

The light purple are Raspberry

                     

These are not Pate de Fruit, but they are another type of chewy candy. They are just like gummy bears! They are also raspberry flavored.

            

Caramel

These are your traditional chewy and creamy caramels that everyone likes to snack on!

To the right are chocolate caramels with flakes of salt on them! The caramelized sugar brings out the rich flavor of the chocolate.

Something I thought of would be to do a layer of the regular caramel and a layer of the chocolate caramel to balance out the strong flavor of the chocolate.

These caramels are definitely not your traditional caramel, but they are in fact delicious! They are passion fruit caramel!! They are by far my favorite type of caramel

      Hard 

        

           Candy

Above are strawberry lollipops!

To the right are mints.

 

To the left are lemon hard candies. They are made from pulling sugar. Let me tell you, pulling sugar is a lot harder than what the chefs make it look on competitions on t.v. You have to make sure the sugar is always warm, which can end up giving you blisters...ouch!

S'more Time

Well, I probably would not make s'mores with these marshmallows. They are mango-yuzu marshmallows. Although, they are pretty good dipped in chocolate!