Dessert-o-licious

With Fall upon us, the time to pick Jersey peaches is quickly winding down. So last weekend, I set out to make sure I got my peach picking in before it was too late. After buying way too many peaches at the orchard, I was left with the dilemma of what on earth to do with them all before they went bad and so I quickly whipped up a peach crisp.

A crisp is one of the easiest and quickest fruit desserts that can be made and is so simple that you have no excuse not to try it!

Here’s my recipe:

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Tags: fruits, recipes

And just like that, the last course of school began, cake decorating. We started the course with a full lesson on marzipan. Marzipan is a paste that is made from almonds and sugar that is usually then formed into various shapes, including fruits, vegetables and flowers. A typical American recipe for marzipan consists of almond paste, confectioners sugar, light corn syrup and fondant. To make it, combine the almond paste with half of the sugar until the sugar is absorbed. Then add the remaining sugar while continuing to mix. Next add the corn syrup and fondant a little at a time. When a handful of marzipan can knead together without too much effort, it is ready. If it’s still too dry, continue adding the corn syrup and fondant until the right consistency is achieved.

Once we had finished making the marzipan, we divided it up and colored each piece so that we could make various fruits and vegetables.

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Tags: cake decorating, decorating, marzipan, tutorial

After completing our lessons on molded, filled, and dipped chocolates it was time to move onto the conclusion of our chocolate module by building out our chocolate showpieces. We were broken out into teams of two and given basic instructions on the structure that our pieces needed to have.

The first class, we sat for a while and talked about all the different materials we could use in our showpiece. Tempered chocolate would need to be used for any structural elements because of its strength. Modeling chocolate could be used for any decorative items. Pastillage, isomalt, or marzipan could be used for additional, finer details.

The whole process seemed like it would be quite overwhelming, but as soon as we finished talking about our options, we got right to work. There was a mold that everyone needed to use which would give us the basic structure for our piece. We could place a variety of textured mats under the mold to achieve texture on the pieces, but other than that, the structure would be the same for everyone. While initially I was unhappy about this inherit structure, by the end of class I realized I would not have had a clue how to begin without it.

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Tags: chocolate, Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), pastry school

Now that we had our feet wet a bit we moved onto filled and dipped chocolates. Whether filling or dipping, it is important to make sure that the chocolate shell is even or you make a stress point in the chocolate, which can sadly, lead to mold growing in the filling.

We started with dipped chocolates, which I found out were much more difficult to do than they seem from the outset. In order to make a filled chocolate, you start by making a filling and spreading it onto a sheet pan inside of a frame (so the filling doesn’t spread and has nice crisp edges). Once the filling has set, remove the frame and temper some chocolate. Then cut the filling into the desired shape for the chocolate and place it onto a chocolate fork. Using the fork, dip the filling into the tempered chocolate and set aside.

Although this sounds easy enough, turns out, it is very difficult to try and get a nice outer coating on the fillings, but after 4 hours, we were able to churn out a bunch of these chocolates.

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Tags: chocolate, Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), pastry school, tips, tutorial

Mod 4 was here, signaling our ¾ mark in the program, we only had 25 more lessons in the classroom and then we were off to our externships. I had been looking forward to this mod from the very beginning, considering that I am one of the world’s largest chocoholics.

When I was about twelve my parents decided to sell our house and my uncle came by to help fix everything up before the sale. He noticed a small hole in my wall and went to spackle it, but the hole kept cracking and expanding. He finally realized what the problem was – I had been stuffing chocolate wrappers into the hole and up the wall for years! As the hole grew and the wrappers flooded the floor, my family’s laughter began…and hasn’t stopped since!

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Tags: chocolate, Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), pastry school

Next we moved onto plated desserts. In these next couple of lessons we took some of the most successful recipes of famous chefs and recreated them in class.

We started class by discussing what some of the elements in a plated dessert are, things like color, flavor, texture, variety, seasonality and cost. Then we were given a production list to follow for the three desserts each team was going to make. And although at first it didn’t make any sense to me to make the ice-cream base for a dessert I was showing on the third day, by the end of the classes, it was all perfectly clear.

My group was going to make: gianduja parfait, crepes suzette, and raspberry mille feuille with ice wine granita and litchi sorbet. I couldn’t have been more excited!

Some of the other desserts that were being made for the first day included:

Chocolate Peanut Tart

Chestnut Parfait

Chocolate Caramel Tart (which my husband keeps asking me to whip up for him!)

Gianduja Parfait

We were making the Gianduja Parfait, with praline cream, hazelnuts, vanilla ice cream, and carmalized bananas. This was a fun dessert to assemble. We started by making the gianduja parfait recipe, which we put into a flexipan to form, and covered each with a sucree base. After these were frozen, we made a chocolate spray and sprayed each one to give it a velvety look. Then we made our vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce, and finally got to caramelize some bananas using a blow torch. The dessert was delicious!

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Tags: Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), pastry school

It was cookie day! I had been hearing about this class for weeks and was excited it was finally upon us. Our chef warned us that we were about to make literally hundred of cookies and should invite some friends to come at the end of class to enjoy the bounty.

We were told that this class would be the closest thing we had in the curriculum to working in a real kitchen and were immediately told the seven cookies recipes we would each need to produce in the next four hours.

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Tags: cookies, Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), pastry school

A chocolate ribbon cake sounds easy enough to create considering we had already been through molded cakes. It is made up of three 6-inch round cake layers of chocolate nut cake, imbibing syrup, mousse, and chocolate plastic. Well, instructions can be deceiving…I had no idea what I was about to get myself into.

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Tags: cake, chocolate, Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), pastry school

In the next 3 lessons we tackled the separated egg sponge cake method, in which you whip the egg yolks with ½ the sugar and separately whisk the whites with the other ½ of the sugar. After both have thickened, fold the yolk mixture into the whites, being careful not to flatten the whites, add in the flour and pour into pans.

This method led us to making pan di spagna, a typical Italian sponge cake, tiramisu, biscuit joconde, symphonie and grenoblois.

These were fun classes because we were getting to make some classics that we recognized.  We all loved making the tiramisu, which was full of coffee and wine flavor and the symphonie, a seven layer cake full of hazelnut cream, ganache, buttercream, and biscuit! We also learned a new trick to help cakes not stick to the cardboard that they’re placed on. If you form a pate a glacer (90% couveture and 10% vegetable oil) and melt it, you can spread it very thinly on the bottom of the first layer of cake and it will prevent the cake from sticking itself to the cardboard.

Next up we leave the traditional world and enter the contemporary with the chocolate ribbon cake!

Tags: cake, Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), mousse, pastry school, tips

In case you’re wondering, a miroir is a cake made of a genoise mousseline cake, syrup, bavarian cream, and nappage. It is a beautiful, delicate cake perfect for any girly event. They are made in entreme rings (essentially cake pans with no bottoms), which create the gorgeously smooth and shiny sides of the cake. To make a miroir, start with 2 discs of genoise mousseline. Place one inside of an entremet ring that has been lined with cardboard. Moisten the layer of cake with syrup. Fill the entreme ring ½ way with bavarian cream. Then place the second layer of cake in the ring and moisten with the syrup. Fill with bavaraian until ¼ of an inch from the top. Chill to set. Reheat your nappage, chill it to room temperature and pour a thin layer over the miroir. Allow to set and unmold.

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Tags: cake, Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), pastry school