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!!