Chocolate showpiece(s)

So the next big project are our showpieces and our buffet.  We have to make one chocolate showpiece, one pastillage showpiece, and one sugar showpiece.  One has to be larger in size to be placed on our buffet platter, which consists of at minimum 9 types of items with three of each item on the platter.  Originally all my pieces were going to be the same, but now they are not. 

I had originally planned on a film theme, and my chocolate piece was to be a clapboard.  The white chocolate took awhile to get the hang of - it was too runny at first for piping out the letters (which were done ALL backwards).  Once I got the hang of it, it still took a long time.  Chef and everyone told me I had to have the name of the movie on it, so in honor of Cheff Hall, our director, I named the film "Patience Iago", which he A L W A Y S says!  My other two Chef's are also part of the crew too, though I was jumped on by other classmates for various rolls in the move too!  :)  Unfortunately the clapboard did not work out as the chocolate set waaay too quickly in the mold an so there were crazy lines in the whole thing.  

Next, I tried to recreate this Threadless shirt for my chocolate piece.  I think this picture is hilarious and titled "Don't play with matches".

I just love the face on the boy!  He is so excited about eating this delicious marshmallow that he does not see Smokey the Bear even coming up behind him!

The images are always flipped around, so here is my Smokey chocolate piece.  The boy has no face as the details were too small to get in before pouring the chocolate block in, so I decided to paint his face on after it was turned out.  In the end I used my other piece, so the boy doesn't have a face.  Yet.

This image titled "Dark side of the garden" was also to great to pass up, so I made it into my other chocolate piece.

I cut out my lighthouse pastiallage pieces yesterday and they are still drying today.  Hopefully I'll get to put them together tomorrow.  I started my sugar piece today, but it is still looking a bit funky. 

Plated desserts for the restaurant

So our first big project for this last term was to create our own dessert menu, cost the menu, and plate all the desserts.  One of the desserts from each person was actually going to be served to the restaurant one night in the place of our usual desserts.  Stress-city for me!  :)  I got really worked up trying to get it all worked out and planned, but it all went well in the end!  As soon as it was over, things were just so much more relaxed for me.  We have another big project after that (the one I am currently working on), but for some reason after this one it didn't seem nearly as stressful to me, yay!

So Tuesday, March 24th was my group's day to serve our dessert in the restaurant.  I was so nervous it wouldn't come out right!  I had gone in the weekend before to make puff pastry dough, so I could roll it out on Monday, our prep day, and cut out the shapes for my peach dish that would actually go out to the restaurant.  This is a picture of my peaches being covered in a lattice puff pastry out in the lounge so I could have some extra room.  I had halved a peach and filled the pit whole with a ball of marzipan, then placed it on a circle of puff pastry with a little cinnamon on it.  I then covered the peach with puff pastry that had a lattice pattern cut into it, egg washed the puff pastry, and baked it.

At 6:30pm, we got to go down to the service kitchen and start plating our first two desserts - one that had to be the one for the restaurant.  This is my "Peach in Puff Pastry" plate with a caramel sauce swirl and three raspberries.  

Later I had to change my three raspberries to one, with two blueberries as well since I was running out of raspberries, but that is okay.

My second dessert that I plated at 6:30pm was my "Cinnamon Roll Bread Pudding".  On Sunday I had made up cinnamon rolls made with sweet dough and filled as Grandma always did.  I did like the flavor that I got from it, very cinnamon-y!  I plated it with caramel sauce, though the dots on the left ran a bit.

At 7:00pm, my third dessert was due, and it was the "Triple Chocolate Tower".  It was made with a dark, milk, and white chocolate mousse layer and topped with a cap of ganache with piped white chocolate decoration on top.  It was plated with a tempered chocolate garnish and chocolate filigree.

My final dessert at 7:15pm was my "Fresh Fruit Stack".  It had lemon mousse (super yummy!), fresh raspberries, fresh blue berries, and fresh mango sandwiched between tuile triangles.  It was plated with raspberry sauce and creme fraiche and a whipped cream rosette.

This is Chef Hall, my main instructor.  I have take a couple of pictures of him before, though for some reason they never actually took.  Ood.  I dunno.  But this one turned out of him!

This is Felicia, one of my group members this term.  She is stylishly wearing a beautiful caramel garnish to accessorize her hair net since she forgot her hat that day.  :)

Overall, the plated desserts were not so bad to do.  I thought the ordering process and working out the costing really put the whole idea of making a "menu" into perspective.  Looking back, I really enjoyed the project.

The art of plating...

So we started off Term 4 learning about the art of plating.  How to use the space well, but not overcrowd your dessert.  How to compliment your dessert with different textures, flavors, and garnishes.  How to decorate your dessert but not hide it with the decorations.  It was a lot of fun, though a lot more pressure on the plates.  We got marked off for various things, but it was definitely a way to get us more conscious about little things that we were not concentrating on quite as much!  

I forgot to take pictures of a few of my desserts - like the souffles - but here are pictures of the ones I remembered to get!  Some are pre-Chef tasting and some are post-Chef tasting, so that is why sometimes there is a bite or two in them.  :)

This is my Creme Caramel aka Flan.  I have never been a big fan of flan, and still am not.  The taste is quite yummy - then again I love most things caramel - but I just don't like the texture of it at all!  Too slimy for me, eew!  I decorated this plate with a caramel twist with whipped cream, blueberries, tiny caramel garnish dots, and kept the original caramel sauce from the flan.

This is the Panna Cotta.  Another slimy-ish dish, but a little better than the flan, but still not a favorite for me.  This plate has chocolate and raspberry sauces with a tempered chocolate garnish.

Our Fruit Mousse had a passion fruit mousse with a raspberry fruit glacage (we also made a guava glacage too).  We got feedback (not just from Chef) that the flavors were quite tart together, but personally I did really enjoy the tartness, but I can definitely see that it wouldn't be for everyone.  This plate has creme anglaise sauce with a little raspberry sauce in the dots, and a small rosette of whipped cream and a mint leaf.

This is my Chocolate Honey Mousse in a Chocolate Cage.  The cage was the main decoration that needed to be used for this plate - though I could have made a chocolate cup instead.  The plate has a chocolate cage, chocolate sauce, honey, and a mint leaf.

This is my Chocolate Marquis.  I loved this one, it was so yummy!  This plate has caramel sauce, whipped cream, a tempered chocolate garnish, and a bit of caramel batter on top.

We then got to make ice cream and we made a little vanilla, a little mocha (more coffee than chocolate), and pecan ice creams.  This is the pecan ice cream, which was incredibly yummy!  I plate it with a tempered chocolate garnish, strawberry slices, and some chocolate dots.

Our sorbet was a White Peach flavor and also super duper yummy!  I am sometimes not into some fruit flavored items, but this sorbet was really good.  It is plated by stacking three scoops of sorbet with a tuile piece pressed into the side, some raspberry sauce with a triangle of mango in it.

And those were the easier desserts to plate!

One week left...

School has gone by SO fast.  I cannot believe it is almost over!  We have been working on our chocolate, pastillage, and sugar show pieces this last week, as well as planning our buffet.  We will work on all those the rest of the week and the buffet is on Monday, followed by our last test on Tuesday, and a luncheon at the restaurant with the current T3 culinary class on Wednesday, and that is it!  

My chocolate pieces... well, my first one didn't set up right, so I redid it with another design.  I was worried about it not setting up right still, so I actually did two more designs this weekend.  They set up okay, but the kitchens were warm, so some of the top design came off as I peeled off the pattern, but I should be able to repair it today.  I will take pictures of them and put them up with the rest of the pictures I have saved after I get back from school tonight.  

I cut out all my pieces for my pastillage project yesterday, so hopefully they will dry okay.  I am trying to make a lighthouse, and they should hopefully be dry by tomorrow or Wednesday so I can glue the pieces together with royal icing then.  

Today I am hoping to start on my sugar pieces, which I am not positive just what I am going to make.  We do have requirements for that one, we need at least 1 flower, 3 leaves, 1 cast pieces, and 1 blown pieces.  I have a few ideas, but still have to see how working with the sugar is for me.  Hopefully I will have a concreted decision made by tonight about it.  

I am hoping to have most of my sugar done by Wednesday so I can focus on my buffet pieces the rest of the week.  I am once again stuck on ideas for "pastry" items, as I seem to come with the same ideas as everyone else.  What to do, what to do...

Wedding cake and candies

And on to my last two projects in Term 3!  My wedding cake was a lot of work, but I actually really enjoyed making it!  With more time, I probably would have kept working at it, but for my first big cake with all kinds of new mediums to work with, I really enjoyed it!

And onto the pictures!

This is the purple fondant that I originally colored.  A nice bright, vibrant purple.

This base shows the original fondant color with the color on the sides, which have faded.  A lot.  :)  But it is okay, it still works.

Since I flipped my cake upside down,  These are the flowers that were "squashed" when the cake "fell".

This picture was supposed to better show how the drop lace is hanging away from the cake, but not by much.  You can kiiinda see it, but not quite so well.

This is Dan, checking out my upside down cake.

We had specific requirements for the cake, but the design was all ours as long as it incorporated then specifications.  We had to have a band of some sort along the base of all layers (mine is the pink band/ribbon), we had to have drop lace on at least one tier (mine is on all three tiers on the pink band), and we had to have at least 5 flowers (mine are supposed to be lily of the valley and I have at least 6 on each tier).

A view from below.

Ta da!  And here is the full picture of the cake!  Each layer is off-set to make it seem as if the cake fell off of a table and that is how it landed.  I decorated each layer as if I was building the cake the correct way with the larger layer on the bottom, so that all the decorations would look as if they really belonged (eg. the drop lace hanging the "correct" way before I flipped it).

After the wedding cake, our last project in Term 3 was the candy platter.  We had to make 10 different types of candy and put 6 of them on our platters.  60 candies, just for the platters!  And there were plenty extra too!  

In the picture, on the middle left, the brown round candies are curry truffles, and the white inside is nougat.  Looking at the large number 6 type shape, starting in the right corner, the dark hearts with white lines in it are dark chocolate candies filled with peppermint fondant, next are milk chocolate candies filled with Grand Marnier ganache, next are milk chocolate candies filled with soft caramel, and the end curve of the 6 are chocolate caramels.  In the middle of the 6 is peanut brittle.  Below the bottom of the 6 are blackberry sour jellies (like sour patch kids), and to the right of the 6 at the top are cashews, pine nuts, peanuts nut clusters coated in white chocolate and drizzled with dark chocolate, and below those are pralines.

Yummy!

Finally! Pictures...

Okay, so here is the start of my attempt to catch up on pictures from the last... almost month - eek!

This is the chocolate honey mouse cake.  It has a roll sponge base, a striped jaconde cake around the side, and is filled with chocolate honey mousse and topped with sliced almonds and cocoa powder.  Mmmm... though the cocoa powder came out a little faster than I'd hoped so there is a touch or two more than needed on there.

These are the normal desserts being plated for the restaurant right now.  I only got pictures of two of them, one being the chocolate dream torte that has always been on the menu, just with new chocolate filigree.

The other dessert is the rum baba, which is a yeast cake soaked in a rum simple syrup, served with whipped cream and fresh fruit.

These are 2 of the 3 other people in my group in Term 3, Daniel and Danika.  Daniel will be working at the ranch with me this summer.

While I am not very good at playing chess, this is the cute chess set we have in the restaurant.  :)