Gluten Free and Vegan Dietary Plating...

Happy Wednesday everyone! I have finally provided you with a little bit of color! I present to you my Vegan dessert and my Gluten Free dessert.  :)  I wanted color but didn't want to use the traditional  strawberries or Raspberries.. soooo I picked Cranberries!! Yummy.

This was a great project. We had to choose from any of the Dietary Specialities.. Diabetics, Vegan, Fat Free, Sugar Free, Dairy Free, Gluten Free, etc. I was glad to learn a little about each one. It was challenging only because we had to await ingredient availability.  Once I saw what was available, I chose the above to create. So let me tell you what I made and I will also give you the recipe in case you want to create it!

My first completion was the Vegan plating:

This is a strawberry Mousse Parfait accompanied by  Vegan Pecan Sandies and a Strawberry Pear and Rum Coulis sauce.

To create the Strawberry Parfait: (makes 4)

Create a Vanilla Cream

1 package of extra firm silk tofu

1/4 cup of Agave Nectar

1 Tablespoon of Coconut Oil

1 teaspoon of Vanilla extract

a pinch of Salt

Create a Strawberry Mousse

1 package of extra firm silk tofu

1 cup strawberries

1 Tablespoon of Agave Nectar

pinch of salt

Chopped strawberries and chopped Walnuts to decorate the top

Procedure:

To make the Vanilla cream, put the tofu in a blender and process until its nice and smooth. Add in the remaining ingredients and blend until smooth and creamy.  Place equal amounts into your four cold parfait glasses. Cool while you create the mousse.

To make the Strawberry Mousse,  place the tofu in a blender and process until its nice and smooth.  Add in the remaining ingredients and blend until smooth and creamy.  Take out the parfaits from the cooler and place equal amounts of the strawberry Mousse atop the Cream. Place this in the cooler as well. After about 10-15 minutes, take the parfaits out and top the parfaits with strawberries and nuts, drizzle some agave nectar on top and  you are ready to dig in!

My second completion was the Gluten Free dessert.

This is a Cranberry, Peach and Apple Crumble with mini candied apples and pears accompanied by a Cranberry Apple Chombard Coulis.

To create the Gluten Free Crumble:

Create the Filling
2 cups of cut up apples, peaches and pears
1/2 cup whole cranberries
1/4 cup of Agave Nectar
1 teaspoon of Cinnamon
1 teaspoon of Arrowroot Starch

Create the Crumble Mix
1 cup of Rice Flour
1/2 cup of Brown Sugar
1 teaspoon of Cinnamon
Pinch of Nutmeg
6 Tablespoons of Vegetable shortening

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Spread your baking dishes with shortening.  Mix together all the Crumble mix and place some in the dish, enough to cover it completely.  Mix together all the Filling ingredients and pour it into your dish.  Place the remainder of the Crumble mix on top.  Bake this for 40 minutes or so and serve hot!

Here was our table after we all took our creations to the front for grading:

I hope you have a beautiful evening.  Thanks for checking in and for all the comments! I really appreciate it all. Tomorrow we create a caramel sauce and a chocolate sauce. Nontraditional, of course. I am not quite sure what kind of flavors I want to come up with, but if you have something different and tasty, I'm all ears!

I cant wait for a day off from class though, this one is challenging, but I could use a little breaky break.  ;)

Night Night to you!



Guava Cream Cheese and Rum Creme Brulee...with jello shots!

Friday fun day... yea right! You mean Friday PRACTICAL day. I actually enjoyed yesterday's prep day as well as today's set up day.  Well, except for the 40 minutes of standing around and waiting for the entire class to get graded one by one... ;) Other than that though, I was a happy camper with it. A practical on just one plated dessert and not THREE is right up my alley! ;) 

Yesterday  I created the Creme Brulee pictured above..aka, the SUN!  We had a day to come up with the flavors we were going to present today. I have been using a bunch of flavors that definitely have been "outside the box", so this time around I created something tropical.  I once again used Mango's..sorry, but its just soo yummy.. but my main ingredients were Guava and Cream Cheese. Yes, I know, very Latino.. but there's nothing Latino about this plate. ;)

I called this my Celestial Plating. :) :) Dear to my heart is someone who I think of more often than not, and ALWAYS when I see the sun, the moon and the stars... So this is for you.

Here we have a Guava, Cream Cheese and Rum Creme Brulee that I topped off with a mango rum jello layer.  I brulee'd the heck out of this baby and set it aside.  To accompany the sun, I created mango rum jello shot STARS. Ooohh these were soo good! .... The galaxy dots are made of mango coulis and last but not least, Coconut Dacquoise Meringue star and MOON cookies that are held up by a guava and cream cheese pink icing CLOUD.

This was our first practical. Our other two plating days were graded, but not graded on taste, presentation and consistency.  Thankfully she liked my plate, she was a pretty harsh critict, but rightly so. As I mentioned before, she is super super nice, but when it comes to the actual desserts and what is put in front of her, you better have your sh** together.  And by sh** I mean your creativity and follow through.  This is our last class, and although many feel as I do, that we really havent learned much, we still did learn something! and its that something that we need to put on a plate. ;) 

We, my friends, are doing "A" ok because an 'A' is what we received today.... making it a nice way to progress into the weekend.

Next week is going to be full of more Practicals and plating days, so lets take a little break, think on some funky flavors and enjoy the rest of the weekend!  Have a fun time! Dont waste a minute of this life on things that do not matter...its a minute you could put into things that do....

XO

Mimosa Panna Cotta, Acai Blueberry Creme Brulee and Tropical Bread Pudding ....

Happy Wednesday!

Time is flying by! I know you hear me say that all the time here, but really, it'll be September next week! Ouch.. Fall already?.. where did summer go? I didn't get to the beach as much as I wanted to. :( I didn't get to play or laugh until my stomach hurt, no rolling in the sand.. .ok, enough of me and my nonsense...I did get to bake, so that in itself is a great thing.

Today we had to plate our Panna Cotta, Creme Brulee and Bread Pudding. Again, having to be creative in our flavor choices and our components. It was a pretty good week. We made some pate a choux and shaped them into fun forms. I made some zig zags, flowers, bows and  what-nots.  ;)  We also made Florentine cookies which we shaped. And which I ate :) :) many of them.. lots of them.. they had peanuts, almonds and cranberry! Cut me some slack, I walked twice around Lake Eola! I may have worked off about .. oh, lets say one of the 5 ??  1/2? Oh who cares!

Tuesday we played with our flavors and created our 3 main desserts and today was our day to present. Soo, lemme just present my craziness... Again, I am not the happiest with these. I would really love to have had more color on my plates, its just that the flavors I come up with all have earth tone colors!  Not to mention.. Bread pudding??!? Really? Plating this isn't the cutest. I personally don't like its taste and it's not the best shaping. I know, I know, just show you the pictures and shut up already. Fine.

Strawberry Mimosa Panna Cotta accompanied by Orange, Lemon and Lime Candied Zest and a Bow Shaped Cinnamon, chocolate, walnut Pate a Choux:  The Panna Cotta flavors are: Strawberry on the bottom layer followed by thin slices of real strawberries, champagne in the center and orange with orange pieces on the top layer, topped off with orange slices and orange zest strips.

My next plate is an Acai Bluberry Creme Brulee in a Graham Cracker and Walnut crust accompanied by a Blueberry reduction sauce and Almond, Peanut and Cranberry Florentine discs.

Last but not least is my Tropical Bread Pudding consisting of mango, walnuts, carrot and coconut accompanied by a hazelnut Frangelico Creme Anglaise sauce and  a toasted coconut and pistachio chocolate sphere.

I hope you likey. :)  I did taste everything. The Panna Cotta came out delicious! I know my sister would have loved it. The champagne in the middle kicked off the strawberry and orange Panna Cotta flavors. The Acai and Blueberry Creme Brulee with the crust was also delicious.  I am not a fan of bread pudding, but the mango and carrots gave it a good kick so I was happy with all three.  Just because we come up with flavors and fancy names doesn't really mean that it tastes good!

All my classmates had some fun creations too!

We have some really creative cats in our class. It inspires me to try harder.... ok, no it doesn't. Sorry, this isn't my thing. Its not what I want to do. I like to make DELICIOUS. And if its traditional, then so be it! I just throw a little Linda twist into it and voila!! That's your non-tradition for ya!

Have a beautiful evening! We have a Creme Brulee practical to prep for.  I think we have made Creme Brulee 7 times throughout this degree. If you cant make the darn thing by now.... then... well.....practice.

All of this is making me thirsty... so Im going to pass on the water and make myself a yummy Mimosa!

Night, night!

XOXO

Plated Napoleons....

Happy Saturday!

Yes, I am writing on a Saturday. My "expected" guest that was supposed to be here yesterday still has not shown up... so I have more than PLENTY of time to do everything I originally needed to do! :) So on that note! Yesterday was plating day.  We had to have both Napoleon's and the 2 components to each plate finished within 2 hours. That was plenty of time for me because I planned to use the Creme Anglaise and the Pastry Creams that I created earlier in the week.

Here is what I came up with!

Lychee Cinnamon Napoleon

This is a toasted coconut rolled Puff Pastry with a Lychee Cinnamon Pastry Cream filling.  My first component is a Lychee Coulis  sauce which I used to create the swirl and dots design. The second component is a Baked Lychee in a cinnamon and brown sugar sauce.

Coconut Banana Napoleon

This is a Cinnamon Sugar rolled Phyllo Pastry with a Banana Coconut Cream Pastry Cream Filling. The first component is a stacked banana, brie and honey side topped with toasted coconut. The second component is the Banana Champagne Creme Anglaise sauce that I used to decorate the plate.

A few things went wrong here... the Pastry Creams were not thick enough.. some fell over the sides, so then I continued on that theme, only to be told it looked "messy". :) And my honey of course, as you can see.. went all over the place. Note to self.. use a drop, and not a steady stream! laughing...

It was fun though! And fun is what counts. :)  Here is a picture of some of the other plates created by my classmates! Enjoy and have a beautiful weekend!



A week into our Plated Desserts Course...

Hello!

A week later and I am just now checking in! Sorry! Had a bit of a crazy week with a bunch of changes taking places. I am all caught up now, so there aren't any more excuses.

It's been quite an interesting week. This class is going to be a challenge and boy am I happy about that! We have to push the envelope with this one. We can not create anything that is traditional. Here, we need to be creative and come up with different flavors on our own, plate differently, decorate and construct desserts in non traditional ways.....thank goodness for the Internet!!

We all know how CREATIVE I can be!! Not! I am sooo "by the book - traditional",  people!!  This makes me uncomfortable, but uncomfortable is a good thing. :)  The week started off by going over everything we will be doing in class. We have a great Chef. She is really nice, but I wouldn't cross her. When she isn't happy.... well, lets just say she isn't happy and its not cute.  ;)  This is our LAST class and people still do the same things they were doing in day one... sooooo... yea! I totally understand when she gets upset. 

Our first plated dessert is the Napoleon. We have to create two different Napoleons, one using a Puff Pastry and the other using Phyllo Dough.  We have to have two different fillings and then two separate components that relate to the flavors of the two Napoleons.

We started by making our Pastry Creams. We each had to make two and then had to flavor them both. At this point, we were to have our creative juices going. Basically, if we used these creams in our Napoleons, then it would be critical to choose the right flavor! Or, you could just create the Pastry Cream and explore the flavor cabinet. Everything is possible, so you can use liquor, extracts, purees, whatever....

The next day we tempered and played with chocolate all day. We got a demo from the French instructor, Chef Thierry.

Not too many people can understand what he is saying because of his accent, but he does know what he is doing. He is a bit silly and is a fun Chef to hang around.  We all then tried to temper chocolate and create cigars, fans and filigree.  Andrea and I tempered the chocolate, but cant say we were very successful in creating anything. Laughing!! I was seriously frustrated and not happy.  We tried to say it was because we created milk chocolate instead of dark chocolate... but then Chef Thierry laughed at us. It's true though! We just didn't make the cut on the tempering. ;)

The next day we created a Creme Anglaise sauce and a Coulis  sauce.  I love Creme Anglaise sauce.. and the one we created came out delicious! It came out that way after the second time around though. The first time around we baked the egg when heating and stirring and it looked soo gross. :) :)

With all these tools and creations we are now ready to create our two plated Napoleons! My next blog will show and tell ya what I created and how I put it together!

See you soon!!

Gingerbread BEACH house!!

Hello, Hello lovies!

Ya know, I didnt want to do this project in the beginning. I kept saying.. why? What a waste.  I mean, you can buy these things in a kit for heavens sake.. but then again, you can buy a cake in a box. Sooo on that note, close minded Linda became innovative Linda. :)

As you know I missed Mondays class and I was so not happy about that.  Donna and Andrea were a team and they were super nice enough to let me be a part of their group yesterday. :)  Thank you girlies. On Monday they made the gingerbread for the house.  On Tuesday, I ate all their candies for the house..and the marshmallows and some of the broken gingerbread chairs. :) :)  But I participated too!!  Sheesh, its not like all I did was munch and sit back ;) That was our live in “house-mate” Juliette up there!

Here you have it. Mini M&M's, the mint candies that were the stilts for our beach home on the water :) :), yellow coloring for our window.. the Gingerbread pieces cut out beautifully. :) We had fun creating this. I was in charge of creating the people. I gave Donna a look, as in, “huh? I have never made a person before!”. Seriously, she gave me a look back that said “What’s your point?” J J  I made a bee once! Laughing!!  Bee….People….kinda like the same in a way. J J So I started to make Juliette and then when the Chef wasn’t looking, I made Romeo being slightly naughty. Hey, we said it was Bora Bora and everyone knows you don’t go to Bora Bora just to lay out.. So yea, I was a little naughty and can not post it as this is a PG site.  :) :)

.....Juliette in all her M&M glory. :) She's nice and bronzed. She looks like she had a little too much to eat in Bora Bora... I made her a little chubby. Real women have curves!!! She is sexy and that's all I have to say.  And Juliette will always have her Romeo

Oohhhh Romeo!!  Bamn! Niiiiiice six pack baby!!! Look at you in your M&M Speedo you hunk of handsomeness. :) :) Tee Hee.. beer in hand, laying out in the ocean.. This is the life.. Ahhhh... lets all pretend like we are there...

Here is the umbrella, the beach ball, sandals, towels….the lounge chairs.. :)  Hey, if you cant go on vacation, you can at least dream about going on the vacation. Oh no! I just thought of something we forgot to create!! Her Beach Bag with her book in it! Drats! Oh well, Juliette just wont be much of a reader, I guess. She’s just naughty!

This was our last project. We made the glass window Case :).  Our class officially ended today.  Tomorrow we go in quickly to CLEAN… and then I am out of there. I wish I could have gone on a mini vacation..I had 4 whole days I could have been lounging on a beach… booo… its ok. My time is coming!

We start our plating class on Monday. I hear we have Chef Murphy!! Love J J I'm REALLY happy about that! I hope that class rocks. I don’t know if I will be plating anything in the near future, but I love plates, and I love desserts, so bring it!

See you here next Monday!!

XOXO

Project 4 completed .... jump ship!

Hi guys,

I missed class today. Classic story too.. I left my car at my brothers house over the weekend since I went on a family trip.  My nephew woke up and did me the favor of taking me over there, 35 minute drive, and after rushing, then going the wrong way and finally getting to the car, what do I recall?  I left my key in the other purse at home, not the one I took on the family vaca.... So yea... needless to say, I was not happy and there goes my perfect attendance. I will get my head back on straight one day. :) Why didn't I get dropped off, you may ask? My lovely steel toed shoes were in my car... i was wearing flip flops. :) The shoes that I dread and hate.  The shoes that have made me cringe every morning since February.

So anyhow, here is my finished product. We have not had our original chef in class for the past 3 classes so I have not been happy about that. One chef has no idea how the other chef teaches or where the chef is in class or on a syllabus...sooooo you can imagine how I feel.  The substitute chef decided to give me a 48/50 on this cake. I had no comment and at that point, I stopped caring. I put work into that cake. I failed on my whale tail with that cake.. I created one out of gum paste that also did not hold its shape, but it still did better than the one I created out of cake..and what for? For nothing... :)  I could have left it as is and probably still got the same grade.  Seems like a lot this year that has gone wrong has literally been for nothing. Zero.. nada. Zilch.

Fun!

Whatever! We started gingerbread houses today, from scratch.  We saw the demo on Friday and we were to make ours today. We shall see what ends up happening tomorrow!  This class is over on Thursday and I look forward to the next one! Plating! Fuuuuun... not!

Ok, you can see I am not in the mood! I am off. I will let you know how tomorrow goes. :)  Here was the back of my cake.. :)

Enjoy your week everyone! I will try to do the same..

XO

The Whale kinda took a dive today.....

You guys!! I had two whale tails nicely covered in a beautiful gray  fondant, ready to go into the ocean and ... and... the darn fin's were too heavy for the little base so they broke. :(  I tried.... 3 times.  Did I give up? Yes, I did.  Not because I didn't want to do it, just because the reality of the situation is that the whale fins on each side are going to be heavier than the base no matter what I try to make them out of.. cake, rice krispies.. it doesn't matter. :(  The look I am going for is just not going to happen.  I want this tail to look just like the one I witnessed in Dana Point, CA.  BUT, nope.. not happening. So instead, I threw in a life saver ring...the red is catchy against the blue ocean and yacht, I likey!  I will make one last attempt to make the whale tail, but out of gum paste instead and see what happens from there. If it doesn't work,you are getting a little shark fin and I'm calling it a day! :)  I wanted the tail to be cake.. :(

Whatever, moving on.  I did detail work on the yacht today. :)  I know a few people were looking at it yesterday wondering what in the world I was doing.. I was thinking that myself!  But it came out nice. I was able to cover a few fondant errors with the detail work.

I am going to stop typing away and start drawing and creating the tail out of gum paste.  :) Wish me luck. Tomorrow is Friday Fun day!! It better be a fun day because no matter what, it is the end of the structured cake and then beginning of Ginger Bread Houses. I am not a fan, but apparently people like these made around Christmas time... I'll let you know how it goes!

Have a beautiful evening. Take your shoes off, kick back and relax... tomorrow is a new day.

XO

Project 3 and we got a 100%

I have surfaced! Sheesh, I am really sorry I was off the map for a bit. I needed a tiny break....Not from you, of course!!  Soooo... happy Wednesday to you! We started our 4th project, the structured cake.  I will tell you a little more about that in a minute.  I think I showed this posted picture of my finished wedding cake project already, but someone mucho special asked me for some up close shots so I am going to put them on here for ya today!  We got a 100% on this project! Yeay! He said he loved it and that I paid great attention to detail, neat lines, etc. etc.. I was happy to hear that because I was really proud of the work I did on this cake. Yipee!!

Here are the pics of the tiers up close, as promised.  Below is the top tier.  I didn't want this embossed too deep, I just wanted a faint leaf look to it and I think I accomplished that.  I wanted the bottom and middle tiers to get all the attention ;).

You can also see that I pressed the leaves into the pastillage heart toppers. I wanted the entire cake to have that look and feel.  The second tier has the vines.

I loved this look for the second tier.  I have seen cakes do this for all three tiers but I wanted to do something a little distinct.  Last but not least, the most time consuming tier, the bottom. :) The beautiful leaves...

There you have it.  I was really happy to see that my cake made the "Wall"  :) Yeay!! And I didn't put it up there myself either.. I just walked in on Monday and there it was. That's Tish's beautiful purple ruffle cake next to mine. She did an amazing job. A lot of work and details went into hers as well.

Let's move on to project #4.  We started baking our cakes on Monday. We get to use real cakes for this project versus using foam.  Oh! and we don't have the choice of making either a purse or the topsy turvy.  We can make any kind of structured cake we want. :)  Thank goodness!  Although I am a purse lover, I really wanted to do something a little more different and complicated.

Moving along.  Monday was not a good day for me.  I made my cakes with Andrea but we ended up using a different recipe than listed.  After doing all that hard work and running from room to room to get to an oven, the cakes came out HORRIBLE. Can we say rubber? Literally, when I threw them away in the trash, they didn't even break!! Didn't even lose a crumb! Geeeezeee! I don't even want to know what that tasted like! Yucky!!  You know what that means.. We had to hurry up and mis en place so that we could get in on Tuesday and bake right away!  That is exactly what happened. I used the right recipe this time. I baked the three cakes and started working on coloring my fondant so that today, I could start to cut, fill and cover the cakes. There went Tuesday.

The theme I ended up picking was the great big blue ocean...with the tail of a whale and the front of a yacht, anchored, watching the whales submerge. This is the initial idea. :) :)  I will let you know if that really ends up happening! Haha... Here is a picture of the start. I cut and filled my 12" cake, which is going to serve as the ocean.

You can see I put some ridges into the cake to make it look like waves. The fondant is a little shiny which ended up working out for me because it looks more like the ocean!  On the left side you can see the cut out of my whale tail as well as the yacht front. I was also able to cover the yacht before I left today.  It gave me a bit of trouble but I will hide the mini flaws with details later. ;)

You can see the marbled look in the blue fondant, it gives it that contrast of colors the ocean has. The cake is a bit small for my yacht and whale, but I am going to make it happen! Oh well, it is what it is at this point!

Tomorrow I should have the whale cake covered, details added to the yacht and waves added to the ocean. I hope it looks ok!

In the meantime, you guys have a beautiful evening! The sky was burgundy last night. It was just lovely to look at. I was in the car, pulled over and just sat there and appreciated it. 

Ok, I'm gone... Ta Ta and see you back here tomorrow.

XO