Day Thirteen

Today was a little less hectic, thank goodness. We split up half of the day; the first part was making ice cream, and the second part was spent in lecture. A sorbet lecture, that is. I liked the sorbet lecture, even though it involved a bit of math. We learned the percentage of water, sugar, and fruit to use in a sorbet.

The picture above is a Silpat with caramelized hazelnuts on top. The caramelized hazelnuts are pretty easy to make. You melt sugar and water in a pan, stir in hazelnuts, and stir and cook until toasted. A little cocoa butter is stirred in at the end. They tasted so good! Just like caramel popcorn. We’re using them for a chocolate ice cream cake (made with hazelnut dacquoise).

These are our ice cream bombs. They’re formed in the domes you see to the left. We placed a layer of raspberry coulis on the bottom, and then filled it with vanilla parfait. It’s not like the yogurt parfait you’re thinking of – I know, I thought the same thing. Vanilla parfait is a vanilla custard with whipped cream folded in.

So after we took the molded, frozen vanilla parfait out of the dome, we froze it again. We filled the bottom and edges of a larger dome with chocolate ice cream. then placed the vanilla parfait in the middle. Then topped everything with our baked sable cookie rounds, and covered it with more ice cream.

We spun our chocolate ice cream today. Action shot:

I had a little taste, and it’s good. Very, very good. I’ll truly know how good it is tomorrow.

My Vacherin! The bottom layer is French meringue, and it’s topped with apricot sorbet, raspberry sorbet, and more meringue.

Slathered with Crème Chantilly (whipped cream), and meringue fingers. Then more whipped cream and some (individually quick frozen) blackberries. The IQF fruit doesn’t bleed juice everywhere. It’s fancy fruit.