All's Well That Ends Well

Last Saturday was the finale to the series on Basic cooking skills at Palate Sensations & as befitting the occasion, the topic was Plated Desserts. With the trend towards desserts taking centrestage ( we now have dessert restaurants opening here in Singapore, where the menu only consists of desserts ), it becomes a very worthwhile skill to have, knowing how to do plated desserts. Hmm....so what are "un-plated" desserts then ? Will have to ask Lynette or Francois that one. Funny how I only just thought of that...

Anyway, on the menu were the following :
Vanilla Creme Brulee
Profiteroles
Passion Fruit Souffle
Chocolate Fondant

I was late again for the class ( had to do an emergency case at work ), so I walked in right when everyone was busy working on their creme brulee, which starts off with boiling cream. Later we would finish off the creme brulee by caramelising a layer of sugar over the top using a blow torch. Here's my finished product : it tasted great ! Now to experiment with other flavours at home - like green tea & sesame, which I have tried before in a couple of Japanese restaurants in Melbourne. Must ask Francois how best to do it.

Speaking of Francois, he had decided that the best way to gain control of his unruly students was to use a little bell, which he would ring each time he wanted us to stop whatever we were doing & listen to him. Felt a bit like Pavlov's dog after a while, but it was effective. This time, although the class was even bigger than last week ( one group had to use a side room to do their cooking ! ), we all managed to do the right things at the right time & everyone was successful in getting their desserts right.

Next up were the profiteroles, which are essentially choux pastry cases as in the eclairs & cream puffs, filled with ice-cream instead of pastry cream, and finished off with chocolate sauce & toasted almond flakes. Making the choux pastry was the hardest part as it required a lot of whisking & stirring - good thing we had 2 guys in the group who put in a lot of elbow grease ! A lot of team work went into this - including putting the finished choux pastry mixture into the piping bags and taking turns to pipe out the cases, plus maing the chocolate sauce. We all chipped in by doing our bit. We also had home-made ice-cream to put into the cases ( vanilla & coffee ! ), made by the chefs.

So with the all co-operation, this was my final product :
Tasted great, and this time around, the choux pastry seemed much easier to make. The home-made ice-cream tasted great - looks like I will have to drag my ice-cream maker out from storage again....

The last 2 items on the menu were rather more difficult & "exotic". I have never tried making a souffle, having heard all about how difficult it was to get one to rise properly. However, I am please to report that we managed to get ours done quite nicely, although this was after the first batch of egg whites refused to whip up nicely ( likely due to there being bits of egg yolk in it & the bowl being greasy ) & we had to redo the egg white mixture. The secret apparently is to butter the ramekins or souffle moulds very well along the walls as well as over the rim. This prevents the mixture from sticking to the mould & thus allows the souffle to rise unimpeded. Passion fruit is an excellent choice as the light tartness went extremely well with the sweetness of the souffle. t smells heavenly too - some of it got onto my recipe sheet & I can still smell the faint aroma of it. Still, I found the final product a tad too sweet as we had sprinkled sugar over the mould after buttering it, plus dusted icing sugar over the top of the cooked souffle.

The final dessert was my favourite : chocolate fondant, otherwise known as "lava cake" as it has a liquid centre which gushes out when the cake is cut. This recipe we used is the very same one that Francois uses in his restaurant, so we were very privileged to be able to use it. This was how mine turned out - I was rather pleased with it, although I kind of lost control with my tube of raspberry sauce, which resulted in a somewhat Tarantino-esque appearance of the final plated dessert. Nonetheless, it tasted great, all the more because it was made with much effort. Am definitely going to make that again in future - especially when I want to impress ! :-) Here's a picture of some of my classmates enjoying the fruits of their labour.

All too soon, the series of lessons has ended. I have learnt much & enjoyed myself thoroughly, making some new friends in the process. Am planning to sign up for the Intense French series, with a Gourmet Challenge at the end - gonna be fun ! On the final note, we also finished up our Mousse cakes started the previous week & this is how our raspberry one turned out.

I didn't get to taste it in the end since I was too full of dessert by then, and so I took it home. According to my siblings, it was very good. :-)