croquenbush....

Croquenbusch. The dessert that's more fun to say than it is to make. This is a traditional French wedding cake as well as a celebration cake at communions and other religious events. The "croke-in-buusch" is a tower of profiteroles or puff pastries filled with a liqueur flavored pastry cream. There was a lot of dipping of profiteroles into hot caramel. The face of each ball is squared off with caramel and caramel is used to glue it all together. I didn't get any second degree burns so I consider the exercise a success.

Some variations include a tower or eclairs or chocolate coated profiteroles. The base is made of nougatine which is a rich mans peanut brittle. Heat up some sugar, caramelize it and stir in almond slivers. I made sure that none of the extra nougatine was thrown away.

By the way - those flowers were made out of sugar. Go figure! giggle

hook 'em.....

A running buddy had an extra ticket to the UT football game against UTEP this past saturday and he invited me along. UTEP gave them a good game last year out in El Paso but it wasn't a contest this year. UT won 64-7.

This picture is of the pre game festivities. Look at all those burnt orange shirts. I understand that if there is a good breeze, keeping that flag on the ground can be a real adventure for the handlers. The game started at 2:30 and it was 94 degrees. The paid attendance was 101,000 people - that's 40 times the size of Cooperstown. yikes. The good news for us was that we were in the shade for the entire game. Even though it wasn't much of a game, it was fun to be a part of it.

the final finally....

The 6 week block on Advanced Patisserie Techniques (Plating) ends tomorrow but I had my final today. The assignment was to create 4 desserts (hot, frozen, chocolate and fruit). Some of the items were repeat creations while others were new. We started from scratch on Monday and made all of the components. We then had 12 minutes today to plate them up and present them. Mistakes were made, lessons learned and items omitted from the original plan. I hate when that happens. Here the 4 plates...

Hot - Sticky Toffee Fig Pudding with Cointreau syrup, creme anglaise and pistachio caramel ice cream

Fruit - Caramelized pineapple napolean with mascarpone pepper cream, coconut gelee, toasted coconut and pineapple sorbet.

Frozen - Blackberry parfait with creme anglaise, blackberry coulis and cassis (black current) sorbet.

Chocolate - Milk chocolate bavarian on a layer of peanut butter ganache and flourless chocolate cake. There is also a chocolate sauce and Black Tea Ice Cream.
Next is a 6 week class on specialty cakes. I'll keep in touch....

happy birthday, caleb....

Carrie had Caleb's birthday party at the Waco Zoo this past Saturday. I've been in Texas for 30 years and I've never been to the Waco Zoo. It was actually quite nice. He turns 4 (wow) on Tuesday, the 22nd. Everybody got him action toys as gifts but I really think he liked the clothes I got him. giggle

It's Andre behind the sunglasses.

Lily is the little girl that lives across the street from Caleb.

tiny bubbles....

The assignment for todays test was to create a dessert for any holiday. I went with Valentine's Day and this is what I came up with....

Behind that chocolate band (I need to work on doing the band perfectly) is a white chocolate bavarian cake. There is a thin layer of flourless chocolate cake on the bottom, fresh strawberries and white chocolate bavarian filling in the mold. Since it is a Valentine's dessert, I came up with a champagne sorbet laying on a bed of strawberries. Yummy.

The sauces are a creme anglaise and strawberry coulis. And then there are chocolate garnishes for the lucky Valentine. Ain't I a sweetheart....

fruit loops....

The assignment for todays dessert was fruit. We were all given a specific fruit and we had to design a dessert around it. Mine was kiwi and here were the guidelines...

There couldn't be any raw fruit in the dish, the dessert had to include a fruit soup, the whole dessert was to be served in a bowl and we had to use fresh fruit for the sorbet - no frozen puree allowed. Here's my creation....

We have a herb in our school garden that is called a kaffir lime plant. It is a waxy leaf but anything you infuse with it tastes like lime flavored Fruit Loops. I chopped some up and included it in the heavy cream that I heated up for Panna Cotta (think flan / custard). Sure enough - when the custard set, it tasted like Fruit Loops. Fun

Here's a picture before I poured in the kiwi soup - the panna cotta is in the center. On top are candied pistachios, a mango kiwi sorbet, a pistachio tuile and a dried lime chip. Around the edge of the bowl is lime dust and poached kiwi wedges. It's hard to see but there is candied lime zest on the top of each piece of kiwi. I infused basil into my kiwi soup so I included a single candied basil leaf in the bowl. My kiwi soup was just a tad thick so I'm not including a picture. I was disappointed in it. It is served cold and even though it could have been a little thinner, it was very refreshing.

no caramel apples allowed....

The theme for today's dessert was caramel. I was a little apprehensive at first but this is what I came up with....

The item on the left is a Sticky Toffee Pudding and it is served hot. It is a cake batter with diced figs and it is drenched in toffee syrup that I flavored with Cointreau (orange liqueur). It was the first time that I had used figs in a recipe and I am now a big fan. Caramel Ice Cream is on the right. It was a hassle to make but it was very tasty. I had meant to tie in the Cointreau with an orange cream in the center but I grabbed the strawberry puree by accident. What a dork. I realized my mistake as I was plating up the dessert and I didn't have time to fix it. The little filagree that is stuck in the ice cream is caramel as well.

Caramel is fun to make and work with but clean up was an adventure.

putting the labor back in labor day...

The room in the back was the remaining item in my home

makeover. I had a bathroom

installed when I upgraded the main bathroom in the house.

The picture of the shower is included

as a reminder of the work that was done. The picture of the clutter is of the adjoining bedroom and it was taken right after the construction was

completed. It had become a storage area for the whole project. I've been whittling down that pile since January through trash and Craigslist sales. Today I cleaned it out completely and painted the walls. Tomorrow I will paint the trim and do a deep cleaning of the floor and windows. I'll include an "after" picture when I get furniture in there. There's a big music festival in the park next to us in October. I wonder if one of those 70,000 festival goers will need to find a last minute weekend rental?

I discovered that my painting muscles are different than my whisking muscles. I'm sore.

autumn fruit...

The theme for todays dessert was apples and pears. This is what I came up with....

I poached the pear in a boiling mixture of red wine, water, cinnamon sticks and nutmeg. Once it was tender, I cored it out and filled it with mascarpone cream and chopped up candied pistachios. It is sitting on an apple chip (dried apple slice).

The item in the center (Apple / Cranberry Charlotte) is a shell of bread slices filled with caramelized diced apples and marinated cranberries. The cranberries were rehydrated in boiling whiskey and simple syrup. The red sauce in the front of the plate is a reduction of the wine mixture that I used for the pear.

The cold item on the right is Pomme Sorbet. For the base of the sorbet, I used Lambic Pomme Beer (apple beer - aka hard cider). Lambic is a Belgium company. They make a mean hard cider and the sorbet came out great. It is very refreshing.

all desserts need equal love....

Even though I have my favorites, I still need to be proud of all my desserts. Even if I'm not crazy about the outcome, I'm still going to display it.

The subject for today was puff pastry. No one likes an eclair more than I do but it was off limits for this assignment. We had used vol au vents in the block dedicated to puff pastry. Puff pastry is extra flaky as a result of a thousand layers of dough and butter rolled together. As the butter expands, the layers expand and the resulting pastry is 8 times bigger than when it started. In the pastry block, I filled a vol au vent (puff pastry cup) with lobster newburg. yum. I decided to use the vol au vent (French for light as air) again today.

For this assignment, I flavored the vol au vent dough with nutmeg. After baking, I filled it with vanilla pastry cream and fresh fruit. To go along with the fruit, I made a raspberry sorbet. The sorbet came out really good. Once again, I made a pint of sorbet for a single scoop serving. Between this and the mango ice cream from a couple of days ago, I'm spending a lot of time in the freezer doing quality inspections. Those little squiggly things are candied orange zest strips. I couldn't stop eating them.