Sugar Shock

"Who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it in dew, cover it in chocolate and a miracle or two? The candyman; the candyman can, the candyman can cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good." You guessed it, it's time for baking and pastry! Or was... since this post is late in coming, baking and pastry has come an gone and I for one am happy to say goodbye. Don't get me wrong, desserts are great, but after three weeks of nothing but sugar sugar sugar I am SO happy to be back in the savory kitchen!

And now time for the postmortem. In our short tenure as "pastry chefs" we made lots of what I would classify as cooks desserts- something fairly simple to make, hard to screw up, and looks good on a plate. Since we made nothing mind blowing I'll just give you a recap of my final exam. Plate one, Creme Brulee. I love creme brulee; it's sweet, but not too sweet, rich, and I can't get enough of the crunchy sugar top. And my plate that I presented was by far my favorite of the night. I used melted finishing chocolate to draw the outline for the design on the plate, as well as draw a small latice heart for garnish. Once the chocolate on the plate hardened, which was no time flat, I was able to fill in the design with some fruit coulis. My only real mess up was the bruleeing of the sugar on top- apparently not bruleed enough.

The next plate of the exam was a fruit tart. Generally I am not a fan of fruit tarts. I like fruit, and I like tarts, but whenever people try to put the two together the results are far from great. Most fruit tarts I have been served have a pastry cream as the base, which in my opinion is a watered down vanilla pudding- not good. But in this fruit tart we filled the sugar dough crust with an almond cream, baked it to set it, topped it with a cornucopia of fruit, and it was o so yummy. While my tart looked great, the very center was slightly undercooked, which unfortunately I didn't realize until I cut into the bad boy. Oops! And then I tried to do a nifty design with the plating, but the coulis kept running, giving it an uneven look.

The final plate of the night was by far the biggest pain in the ass- the raspberry charlotte. The charlotte is what you would call an "ice-box"cake. You have layers of biscuit cuillere (or lady fingers), sandwiched between a raspberry mousse, topped with a raspberry gelee. There are so many ways that this dessert can go wrong, and you will never know if catastrophe has struck until you cut into it. As you can tell from mine, it was doin' the wave, which resulted from an inconsistency in piping the cookie dough, but in my defense that dough is so runny that it is difficult to get an even layer. Something to strive for next time.

Next post, tales from Cuisine III...

Mmmmm, meat!

It's official, I have completely OD'd on meat. After some yummy, although fat laden veggies, we entered into the wonderful world of meat cookery. While at first I was excited to actually cook composed dishes, this quickly turned to an aversion so strong that my stomach would begin to turn at the thought of eating any more meat. Don't get me wrong, we made some tasty dishes, from bacon wrapped filet mignon to herb crusted lamb chops, but after three weeks of non-stop meat (at least two different meat dishes a night) I am so ready for a meat-free vacation. Kairi (the pooch) on the other had has been loving it. While I have no desire to eat all this meat (beyond tasting the dish), I am nothing if not frugal- so I packed up as much of this stuff as I could get my hands on and took it home to my loving dog who was patiently awaiting my arrival . I would walk in my door each night, kick off my shoes as fast as possible, and relieve my weary shoulders of my meat-ladden booty. Kairi would immediately jump from the bed, although she had been in a deep sleep only a moment before, to start stiffing her way through my (large) bag off goodies. While you may balk at me feeding my dog bacon wrapped filet mignon, by the end of this section not only was I packing up my food to take home for Kairi but so was everyone else!