Day Twenty

Hello everyone!  I hope you’re having a great weekend.  I woke up “early” and made Eric some Saturday morning/afternoon brunch.  Honey-wheat waffles, applewood smoked bacon, hash browns, and sliced oranges.  I wasn’t kidding when I said I was going to practice my citrus segmenting this weekend. 

I feel like I’m annoying/bugging everyone about this contest, but it’s only for a few more days, so bear with me.  You can vote every day for my peanut butter & jelly macaroons until August 17th.  I would really, really appreciate your vote!  The winner takes home $5,000!  You just have to “like” the California Grapes page and then you can vote.  You have to scroll down a bit to see my recipe.  My name is Emily Hobbs… pretty sure you already knew that. 

We plated FIVE desserts yesterday in class.  Here we go, folks.  Buckle up.

The first dessert (above) is segmented oranges and grapefruit, topped with candied orange zest, grapefruit jellee, honey ice cream, and a grapefruit almond tuile.  I thought the citrus mixed with the honey ice cream worked really well. 

Next is my favorite dessert I’ve made in class so far.  Chocolate lovers cake with coffee ice cream, crème anglaise, and cocoa nibs.  The molten chocolate filling was amazing.  You know how good this was, don’t you?


This next dessert is crème caramel topped with a quenelle of whipped cream, a strawberry, and a caramel decoration.  This was good, as well.  Definitely not as good as chocolate lovers cake.  Making quenelles is tough.  I’m going to practice this weekend. 


This is the filling of our papillote.  It’s parchment paper topped with pineapple, banana, blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberrries, butter, lime zest and juice, vanilla, and brown sugar.  



After baking, we garnish the papillote with fruit berries, strawberry sorbet, and a spiced tuile.
I wasn’t expecting to like this that much, but it was so very, very good. 
 


The final dessert is a hazelnut financier cake, baked in a cast iron skillet, topped with poached pears, praline ice cream, a pear chip, and fresh herbs.  This was my second favorite dessert.  The cake and the pears were fantastic.  The ice cream was a little overpowering, though.  I think a vanilla or honey ice cream would have worked better. 



Whew.  Yesterday was a busy day, and I was stuffed by the time class was over!  Sugar overload.