And then there was 1

Last class! I cannot believe how fast this program has gone. It has been such a whirlwind but I feel like I have learned a lot. My skillset has completely changed. What I thought I would hate I ended up loving and vice versa (well, I don't think I hated anything). Wait, no more reminiscing. I can't do that until after this class.

I finished my last class strong. I actually got 100% on every practical exam in that class. Our last project was making a chocolate sculpture. This took about a week since we had demo days mixed in. I tempered a lot of chocolate, broke many delicate pieces and ended up with this swan.

For this piece we had to make a back piece out of dark chocolate, we had to make overlay pieces out of white chocolate (the wings on mine and the leaves), we had to make at least one flower, do some type of white chocolate filigree and make a base.

The wings were the trickiest part for me. I must have made about 20 and came away with 2 usable pieces. Luckily I didn't break them and my swan came away with 2 wings. I loved the flowers. They kind of looked like water lilies. The base was made of white chocolate, dark chocolate and cocoa butter. I dyed my cocoa butter so my base would look a bit more like water.


All in all I was happy with my sculpture. We made the back piece on a humid day so I did get some bloom on my dark chocolate so if I could go back in time I would redo it and try to get zero bloom. Unfortunately there isn't a lot of need for chocolate sculptures in the industry so I probably won't have the opportunity to try again. That is the only downside to such a fast program. I like to do things over and over until I get really good at whatever skill I am working on. I don't usually have the opportunity to do that though unless I practice at home. I guess I will have to make myself a chocolate sculpture at home!

Plate it up

I have finished the plated desserts portion of the class. We had to make six plates that were graded on taste appearance and whether or not all the correct components were on the plate. I got 100% on each of them!
For each plate we were given a list of requirements of what needed to be on the plate. Aside from that we are able to make them our own. I tried to make each plate different but there are some obvious trends in my plating style.

Plate #1 - Creme Brulee. This plate was tricky because we had to include a tuile (that waffle cookie looking thing), a brandy snap (the lacey thing), fresh fruit and a nut spear (basically a nut dipped in carmelized sugar). That is a lot to fit on a little creme brulee. Mine initially looked nicer than what is pictured but I forgot to snap a pic before being graded. My instructor broke up and tastes both cookies and took a small taste of the creme brulee. I tried to hide chunk missing from the brulee for a picture and used b-list cookies.




This was my favorite. It is a napoleon which is layers of puff pastry with a creamy filling. We used chocolate diplomat cream. This was also our first plate with sauce. We made a raspberry and a chocolate sauce. We had to include two different sugar garnishes. I piped sugar and used isomalt to make that blue sugar thing on top. We included orange supremes as well (oranges cut in a way that no pith or membrane is showing).





Not my favorite. Actually, I would have liked it a lot better if I hadn't made those things that look like arrows. Anyway, for this one we made apple and phyllo dessert, similar to a turnover. We had to include a caramel sauce, raspberry sauce, cinnamon ice cream, a tuile cookie and sugar work of our choosing. I made a sugar corckscrew and a nest that the turnover is sitting on. We were required to use these little cinnamon and sugar phyllo haystack things that the ice cream is on. I'm sure it has a fancy french name other than hay stack thing.

This dessert was a pineapple tart tatin. It is basically baked fruit with caramel and puff pastry. We served it with panna cotta, the haystack thing, a sugar garnish, an apple gastrique and tempered chocolate. This one was very tasty.

This was our chocolate dessert. We had to incorporate a whipped chocolate ganache, chocolate mousse, a tempered chocolate vessel, curl and cigarette, passion fruit sauce and dacquoise cake. having both chocolate mousse and ganache seemed a bit much to me so I put them together in the chocolate vessel to make a duo of chocolate. Or I guess it was a trio if you include the chocolate cup.

Last we made a pear poached in red wine. We then reduce the poaching liquid to made a red wine reduction. We also included vanilla diplomat cream, ice cream, the haystack and a sugar garnish. This one was also very tasty and extremely easy.



Now that we finished our plates we are on to candy!