Evening of Desserts at FCI

The Evening of Desserts is an event in the pastry program that we were all looking forward to. We had seen the Level 2s before us get to do it, and I know I was anxiously awaiting a chance to show off what I had learned for my friends and family.

My team's dessert - chocolate hazelnut mendiant

We each got to invite guests to come and sample desserts that we prepared and plated. My parents, my sister Melissa and her boyfriend Joe all came to check it out. Being on a Tuesday in the city, I was really happy they could make it.

Molly prepping the amuse bouche - a lemon scorpino

We had a menu of eight items that our guests could order from, and each team was in charge of plating one of the desserts. My partner Brittany and I were in charge of the chocolate hazelnut mendiant. I'm not sure why it's called mendiant, but it was a semifreddo. We made a (really boozy) cherry compote to go with it, a kirsch caramel sauce, and a really crazy chocolate piece. I had the idea for the chocolate "wave" from something I had seen on Best Thing I Ever Ate (which ended up being nothing like our finished wave).

With my parents - you can tell my mom has spent more time at the beach than I have this summer!

With Melissa & Joe - another illustration of how I've spent my summer tucked in a kitchen, away from the any sort of UV rays...they both work at the beach

The mendiant ended up being the most ordered item (thanks my classmate Molly who plugged our dessert in her intro), and Brit & I were a well-oiled machine.

Kataifi nest with fromage blanc mousse and fruit compote

Overall, the night went really smoothly. Everyone was super pleased with the results, and my family loved the desserts they ordered.

Panna cotta with peach compote, raspberry riesling granita, and granola

After everyone left, we got to taste the desserts we served. My personal favorite was the fontaine, which was a chocolate cake with ganache and fresh raspberrys wrapped in filo dough and baked. It was served with a trio of sauces, and was so good. A close second was a kataif (another type of dough) nest with the fromage blanc mousse.

Fontaine

Tiramisu

Champagne sabayon with roasted peaches

Plum soup with almond cubes and orange sherbet

Group scorpino shot to cheers the end of the evening

Week 30: Back to Plated Desserts

There are three plated desserts units in the FCI pastry program, and in our second one we moved on to some more complicated desserts and some more polished plating. The style of plated desserts we do at FCI is VERY polished - a lot more so than I see my style evolving. On every plate there will be a dessert, a couple sauces, a tuile (thin cookie), a chocolate doodad, some fruit, a garnish, more garnish. Don't get me wrong, it all looks very pretty, but just a little too "done" for my taste.

Chocolate hazelnut mendiant with cherry compote

Speaking of actually taste, the desserts we made in this unit were fantastic. We made a lot of semifreddos which reminded me of ice cream...that isn't ice cream. The mint chocolate one was a particular favorite of mine, and I don't even particularly like mint.

White chocolate citrus semifreddo with strawberry salad

White chocolate hazelnut semifreddo - the raspberry cake part of it was excellent

What's been interesting to me has been the combinations of flavors we put together that surprisingly go well together. I like experimenting with this, and our chefs having a lot more experience than us and have been good leaders. When I read the dessert descriptions the night before class, I'm sometimes skeptical about how things with pair, but it's all been good so far.

Chocolate mint semifreddo with blackberry salad - sooo good

The highlight of the second plated dessert unit was the Evening of Desserts we hosted for our friends and family (more about that in another post), but a close second was the Saturday morning Chef Peter made breakfast for the 8 of us who had showed up for class. Poor Chef Peter, the only male in a group of 16 women, has to put up with a high chatter volume, lots of giggling, and a ton of Christmas carol singing (don't ask...) from us. The biscuits he made nearly brought the 8 of us to tears, they were so good. Buttery, light, flaky. I've never had biscuits this good before. I still dream about them.

Those biscuits!

Week 25: Couple More Plated Desserts

When posting pictures last week of the plated desserts unit, I forgot the last two desserts we made the night of our exam. We weren't graded on these desserts, but both were really delicious.

The first was a cold strawberry charlotte. The charlotte was made up of ladyfingers with a strawberry Bavarian cream (kind of like a mousse). It was plated with berry sorbet and salad with a clear sauce.


The second was a warm charlotte. This one was made from white bread soaked in butter (delicious on its own) that was filled with a mixed fruit compote and baked. We served it with a butterscotch sauce and a red plum spuma. A spuma is a delicious new frozen treat I've discovered thanks to FCI. It's just a sorbet with an Italian meringue (a very sweet, airy mixture of egg whites and sugar) folded in.

Week 24-25: Intro to Plated Desserts

Our first plated dessert unit was only 6 classes long, but boy did it feel like a lifetime. Perhaps one of the units I was most looking forward to, it was almost a complete disaster. I'm now regularly blogging at Food 2, and you can read all about my class's struggles with plated desserts in the Food 2 School series here.

Chocolate Marquise with cherry compote & creme anglaise

Here's all the pictures I took from the unit. Everything we made was as delicious as it looked, if not more. My chef pants grew even tighter over those two weeks (and they're tight to begin with being as they're manufactured inexplicably so that the "elastic" waist is half the circumference of 1 pant leg). For many reasons, I was really happy to leave behind individual desserts for the time being.

Creme Caramel

My favorite items from the unit were probably the pineapple tarte tatin and the creme brulee (which has long been my favorite dessert). Any of the ice creams and sorbets we made were delicious, and I could usually be found covertly (ok, maybe not so covertly) taking additional scoops of them.

Creme Brulee with Pistachio Shortbread

My least favorite was definitely the creme caramel (flan). How can a cousin of creme brulee taste so bad?? For me, when I don't like an item it's usually because of the texture, and creme caramel is the perfect example of this.

Fennel Hazelnut Tart with Fig Ice Cream

To illustrate just how many components go into these desserts, for two of the pictures I identified each of the items on the plate.

Lemon Tart with Basil Creme Anglaise & Berry Sorbet

Milk Marmalade Tart

Manjari Chocolate Tart with Coconut Ice Cream

Banana Macadamia Financier

Pineapple Tarte Tatin with Pineapple Passion Sauce

& Lemon Frozen Yogurt

Spinach and Cheese Jalousie with Bechemel Sauce