Another week on plating! We did mise on place on Thursday, preparing the components of Vacherin: meringue discs, raspberry sorbet and vanilla ice cream. Vacherin is actually a Swiss cheese, and the dessert is so called because it looks like the vacherin cheese. Tell me about it..I don't suscribe to the resemblance but oh well, just a piece of history on the dessert to keep in mind.

I was going to do an igloo theme for the dessert because of all the frozen sorbet and ice cream inside, but the penguin meringue that I piped didn't really look like a penguin at all. I think it looked more like a porcupine. Anyway, I'm not sure if the freeer broke down from over usage but our frozen desserts simply did not harden like Chef's ones did. So we had to spread the sorbet and ice cream onto the meringue instead of cutting them into nice discs to assemble. I was probably still thinking of Valentine's Day and feeling a great sense of injustice that I had not made any Valentine's Day dessert that was truly my own creation (St Honore's design was pretty standard so that doesn't count!), so I decided to make it a really sweet Vacherin dessert (it is really sweet in taste also by the way).

The next dessert - Hot and Cold Souffle. I've never tried a souffle before and the closest I've come to sniffing it is reading food reviews which laud the dessert. Oh well, granted that it rises really high but taste-wise, I wouldn't put it on a pedestal. For the cold souffle, we made one flavoured with grand marnier and froze it. Like many others, mine collapsed...

And the hot souffle...this is one dessert you have to work really fast with and prepare your plating decorations before it's ready, because it deflates within minutes out of the oven. We made a Morello Cherry Souffle, I went for classic, and was rewarded with the honour of getting my plated desert onto Chef's phone gallery. It was a great feeling. I really like it too..cos the plating can be done real fast and still looks clean and elegant..Chef always emphasizes to us that in the industry it is not just about making the nicest plated dessert, but about making something that is pleasing to the eye yet time-economical in the preparation. Now I am beginning to understand what he means.

Second day was also a good day because I got full marks for my theory test and two marks shy of a perfect score for a written assignment.

Third day...return of The Chocolate. Yup, we had to work with chocolate again..tempering..tabling..it isn't too bad really..just rather messy. We made almond rochers and vienna almonds. I totally love the vienna almonds..they have this wonderful caramel flavour and crunch and I'd swear by the pringles jingle for this one..once you pop you can't stop! The rochers were a tad too sweet...I actually love the slivered almonds coated in sugar solution and icing sugar, and then toasted slightly..it tastes like the sugar-coated kachang puteh they used to sell outside the cinemas in Singapore. But once you coat them with the milk chocolate, it kind of loses that natural, almost fresh taste. The lesson was easy, but the chocolate decorations were time-consuming as we tried to make different types of decorations. I did cut-out shapes, a little chocolate writing, and also tried to make the swirl cigars that I had seen a chef doing on youtube. It's fun! But I need more practice on it.

I called my plate Fantasy because savouring the vienna almonds and rochers is such a nice feeling and you feel like you're in fantasyland.  :)

This week's lessons focus on plating. First up, we did a raspberry bavarois (pronounced as ba-va-ruah). Bavarois is the French term for Bavarian Cream. It is like a mousse, except that it has egg yolks added into it. After preparing the mixture, it is poured into small moulds or Dariole moulds (Dariole is French for a small, cylindrical-shaped mould).

I wanted to create height for my plate with my caramel wheel, but alas it cut into the bavarois when I tried to stand the wheel upright against the fragile dessert. So I had to place it flat on the plate, which really kinda loses the whole effect that I wanted to create. This plating isn't too good, so I shall try something simpler and cleaner the next time. I think it is a little bland too..perhaps a little more sugar in the recipe might make it taste a little more appealing to the tastebuds.

Then we did a buttermilk panna cotta. Panna Cotta is Italian for "cooked cream", because this dessert is made by cooking cream and then adding in the rest of the ingredients. This I must say is a wonderful dessert. A combination of sweet and tangy, smooth but not overly soft...it is simply... heavenly. We made ours with a pineapple, strawberry and mint salsa (salad). I think it would taste lovely with warm caramel sauce drizzled over it.

Second day. Another day of plating. The star of the day was..chocolate pudding. Yummy. The perfectly done chocolate pudding holds its shape but oozes out chocolate when you cut into it.  I figured the whole world would be using tuille/ bubble sugar/ caramel sugar for their decorative piece so I went with something which we learnt back in basic class - caramelised fruit slice. I didn't do it so well in basic class but today my orange slice turned out really nice - firm and shiny. Alas, it couldn't stand up on top of the pudding so I had to press it down into the pudding, which I didn't really like. Chef said that was probably the only way to make it stand. Anyway, I should've done without the lemon slice. Orange and chocolate makes a great pair and we don't need a lamp post around huh..I was also looking for chopped pistachio nuts to give some nice green colour to the plate but there was none in the kitchen. Oh well. So I had to settle for slivered almonds. The sauce is a little messy. I shall do it better next time.

Companion for day number two? Grilled Fresh Fruit with Cointreau Sabayon. We grilled fruit skewers in a mixture of butter, spices, cointreau and sugar, and then drizzled it with sabayon. My favourite part of the dish was the grilled bananas. I love to eat bananas and they taste especially fabulous when they're grilled. The only nightmare now is that bananas cost a hefty $6.98/kg at the supermarkets. That's like ten times more than in Singapore. We only pay SG$1.90/kg for bananas in Singapore and the price is almost always stable, fluctuating at most by a couple of cents. Looks like I have to stay away from bananas for some time..

On the third day, we made Savarin and Crepe Suzette. Savarin is an yeast cake that is soaked in a fruit and liquor solution, and sometimes filled with whipped cream and fruits. It is made in small or large bundt tins. I only had one savarin mould to use for my presentation piece so I made doubly sure that I greased and dusted the mould really well and put the filling in evenly. This is quite a yummy dessert, except that I find it a little on the soft side . Wonder if it would taste better after being left in the fridge. Back to plate presentation and today I told myself that I had to focus and not let negative events in the kitchen affect me. We were supposed to do a spun sugar nest to decorate the savarin and Chef said we had to do it. I wasn't that keen on doing the nest because I didn't want my dessert to look like everyone else's...so I decided to give my dessert a twist and and made a super pink tornado with the spun sugar instead! I was so happy with my dessert that I actually took a photo with my plate for the first time in my LCB life.. :)

Making the crepe suzette was fun too. It is really easy to prepare the mixture and cook it, but I think to get the perfect consistency for the mixture is a little tricky. After we cooked the crepes we then had to coat it in an orange sauce and flambe it with grand marnier. I didn't like this recipe though. I think my mum makes better crepe suzette.

Done with Week 3!

Week 2. More cakes. A little English puff pastry, and choux. First lesson was all about mise en place, preparing the ingredients for the pastries that we were going to make over the next two days. On the second day, we did Gateau Concorde. The components of this cake is similar to Feuille D'Automne. It also consists of meringue discs and chocolate mousse assembled in alternating layers. However, for this cake we use a chocolate meringue instead of almond meringue. For the mousse we just made it with couverture and cream, and whipped cream, unlike Feuille D'Automne where we also added butter, egg whites and sugar.

Then there was puff pastry tranche, which is French for "slice" or "portion". I didn't do this too well and I wasn't pleased with it. We made this with English puff pastry. 1 single turn and 3 book turns. On this day I was reminded that focus in the kitchen is very very important, and that as chefs we have to be professional and not let our surrounding environments affect our work output.

The next day I made sure I stayed focused. And the result was good. I managed to produce a considerably presentable St Honore and Chocolate Tart. St Honore is made up of a puff pastry base and a choux pastry rim and cream choux puffs all around the edges. It is filled with Creme Diplomat (which is pat cream mixed with whipped cream, and a little gelatine added to stabalise the cream) and piped into the pastry ring using a special V-shaped tube. The top is then garnished in extravagant fashion with a spun sugar nest and caramel decorations. It was fun to do the spun sugar nest for the St Honore. A little messy though.