Back to food.

From the looks of my recent posts, it seems as if I've only been hopping around France wandering about. And I have, a little. But I've spent most of my time in the lab up to my elbows in butter and flour (or burre et farine). So it's time to return to my main subject. Food.

As usual, I'm playing catchup and I have so much to tell you I don't know where to start. So I'll just start with the most recent and jump around. That's how my brain works anyway.

Our buffet from yesterday.


MILLEFEUILLE
Again, very traditional French pastry. It's puff pastry, layered with pastry creme and then topped with fondant.


CROISSANTS
Our first go was a failure according to Chef Sebastian. In this cross section you can clearly see all the layers, oh, no you can't. That's the problem. When rolling out all the tours (folding rolling out, refrigerating, folding, rolling out, refrigerating, etc.) our dough became too soft and our butter melted into the dough. This is a no no. If the butter melts, the layers fuse together and it's just one big clump of dough and you may as well call it brioche.


CHARLOTTE AUX FRAISES
Mostly a mixture of pastry cream and whip cream, with fruit and a light cookie for crunch. Not bad at all.


BABA RHUM
I've never been a fan of alcohol in my desserts. This stayed true with my Baba Rhum. It was a bit of a fiasco. I applied too much rhum and my cake pretty much fell apart. But we decorated with fruit and voila, banana saved my Baba.


FOREST NOIR (Black Forest)
I named mine The Forbidden Forest.
(an exception to my alcohol in dessert dislike)


It's alternating layers of chocolate cake soaked in sherry syrup and Chantilly cream (good God this stuff is fantastic). Sherry cherries are sprinkled in with the Chantilly. Then the entire cake is coated with dark chocolate shavings and cigarettes. Making chocolate cigarettes is entirely more difficult that it looks by the way. But I think I could probably say that about most of the things I've been making. In any case, I'll be making Forest Noir again and again. Both for me and my future shop. We cut into this one yesterday.



PLATED DESSERTS

This was my first go at a plated dessert. We had all of 2 minutes to throw something together. I got the seal of approval from our design teacher who came in and critiqued all the work. (How cute is his son?)


Tam's turned out great.

Off for now. More to come... Bonne journée

PS: If anyone wants a specific recipe just let me know. I'm happy to share and I'll do my best to explain.