You're Hot Then You're Cold...Desserts- Week 5

To finish up the commercial cookery module, we had 6 lessons of hot and cold desserts. We'd all been waiting for this since the beginning, so it was with great excitement that I rocked up to Tafe on Monday to make a Passionfruit Bavarois with a Tuille Biscuit, Caramel and Passionfruit Sauce. Ahh, the naivety. It turns out that Bavarois are a ridiculous thing to make. First you need to make an anglaise sauce (custard), add gelatine, cool it down, add whipped cream and then set it in moulds. Sadly for me, I curdled my anglaise, so I had to start again, but my second attempt resulted in a lovely light and creamy bavarois.

Next up, we made a Praline Parfait and some Japonaise and Raspberry Coulis. The parfait needed to set, so we served it the following day. The Japonaise (a meringue with crushed nuts) was made to be served with Chocolate Mousse later in the week. After we'd made these bits and pieces, we prepared a Fruit Plate with Champagne Sabayon. To summarise, we prepared a lovely looking fruit plate and then smothered it with a sauce that looked like vomit and tasted like a hangover.

Fruit plate before... 

And after sabayon...

Hump day of week 5 was Chocolate Mousse day. What a great day. To accompany our mousse, we also made a chocolate glaze, filigrees and chantilly cream. 

What a winner!

We also prepared Tiramisu to be presented on Friday, so keep reading to find out the result! Ooh! Suspense! 

Creme Brulee was our Thursday dessert, and we learnt some sneaky tricks of the trade. It's all about the tricks! Instead of sprinkling sugar on top of the custard and blow-torching that, instead, we made a toffee and then crushed it up and sprinkled that on top before blow-torching. This basically sped up the caramelisation process and supposedly provided a more even coverage, however it did mean that you needed a bit more brute force to crack open the top, because the layer was so thick.

 Brulee

We also plated up our Parfaits from Tuesday. We whipped up some italian meringue and splotched some raspberry coulis on a plate, and were instructed to try two different plating styles. 

 Number 1

Number 2

At the end of another week, we were up for a souffle challenge. Hot Chocolate Souffles were the challenger, and we were ready for the battle. The recipe and method provided us with perfect light and airy souffles. What a win. 

Souffle with Anglaise to the right, and Tiramisu at the back. 

We also plated up our Tiramisu. I wasn't a massive fan of the orange that we added to the custard, but hey, it was a nice dessert to practice. 

Sorry about the stingy serving size. 

One more day of desserts after the weekend, then a break before starting the real Patisserie lessons. xx