Brests, Brests, and More Brests

Thanks to my tech-savvy husband and various tools like Google analytics, MyBlogLog, 103bees, etc., I am able to track the number of visitors to this site, what they clicked on, and examine the ways people find this blog. We chuckle every time we notice that poor spelling pervs are finding my site using the search term "brests", which happens to be quite often. This is due to my past post titled Paris Brests. Here are the results of various search engines: Live Search, DogPile, Windows Media, you'll also find it using Google, it's just not on the first results page. Search results fluctuate frequently so my site could have been knocked lower by the time you read this.

Okay, I admit it could be a little misleading so I thought it is only fair that I show them what they are really after. Here you are – boobs!!

Tagged as: [ brests paris pastry ]

Dessert Menu Development Project at NWCAV

The past two weeks in class have been spent on plated desserts. We made over 45 different recipes for the following: ice creams, sorbets, sherbets, sauces, puddings, soufflés, marshmallows, panna cotta, parfaits, compotes, salsas, sabayons, molten cakes, pate d'fruit, jellies, sponges, tuiles, crepes, tarts...the list goes on and on and on.

To wrap up the series, we each had to create a 5-course dessert menu (with sketches) and calculate the food costing for one of the items. We began on Thursday morning, preparing what we could and had to present our first plated dessert that afternoon. Nothing could be done in advance of Thursday. No chocolate decorations, no garnish – nothing. Today, we had to present our second item. Here is the menu that I created for the imaginary "Pique" restaurant.


I enjoyed the project. In our discussion at the end of class today I had commented on how much of a challenge it has been to beckon that creativity within. After not really allowing it to come out for so long, it is a bit testing. As with everything I have said in this blog, it will just take practice, experience, and exposure to different things to build up that database in the brain. The basic techniques are always the foundation. Take ideas from various things that you see and like and put them together to create something new. What becomes unique is how you can put different components together and apply modern spins on classic desserts. Nobody is expected to reinvent the wheel.

The first dessert I presented yesterday was a Fresh Orange Cake with Raspberry Mousse and a Grand Marnier Sabayon. I liked the flavors but I shouldn't have made my cake 4 layers – it should have been just two. It looked a little messy and the serving wound up being too big. Plus I didn't think that when you put your fork into the dessert that the first layer of cake would squash everything underneath it because the mousse could not withstand that much pressure from above. Whoops – that is where I should have practiced more.


Today's dessert turned out better. I made a Chocolate Pomegranate Molten Cake with Pomegranate Jelly and Grapefruit Sherbet with a Tuile Cookie. I thought the colors on the plate were vibrant.

Tagged as: [ caramel chocolate dessert development menu mousse nougatine nwcav pastry pomegranate tuiles ]