More Mousse On the Loose

I’ve been having a busy time this class working a few extra tours and getting ready for the career fair on campus this Tuesday, hence the lack of updates. But I’m still alive, as is my teammate, though the less said of her the better.

I will say that Chef is paying ever closer attention to us, which is maddening. When I was tempering chocolate to do the little cups for our Mochaccinos, he just came over and stood there, watching. And let me just say that having a chef watch me temper chocolate is just slightly less harrowing than having a chef watch me swim laps, though at least this time I wasn’t in my bathing suit.

While I was tempering chocolate (and probably taking too long), my teammate was doing a mousse. Whatever she did, it was unusable. Grainy and runny and separated. Chef saw that, too, of course, and proceeded to tell me he would make the mousse again with us, as if I was the one who had screwed it up. It was humiliating, but I know he knew it wasn’t me actually doing the mousse... no, no, I was the one taking too long tempering chocolate when I should have been faster so I could help my teammate Zesty the Clueless. Ugh.

See what I mean? The less said of that side of class the better.

I still really like him and love a lot of the recipes and flavor profiles he’s given us. Here is a sampling of some of what Zesty and I have done over the past two weeks. All of the recipes are Chef’s, but we were given full license on how to assemble the different components:

Below is our first assignment, a terrine molded "Fig Newton" cake... the flavor profile and textures are evocative of the cookie, but taken to another level. Graham cookie base with a compote made of figs poached in port with orange zest and spices, plus mascarpone mousse. After cutting the slices (we did 24, saving these two for review), we realized it looked like an angry monster. Well it does, if you use your imagination.



Yeah, the layers are pretty rough, and the poached halved fig on top looks kinda icky, but the terrine mold turned out to be trickier than anticipated when it came time to unmold.

The one below was my favorite, aesthetically, of the things we’ve done so far. It’s a Strawberry Yogurt and Passionfruit Mousse. It was my idea to pipe passionfruit puree on acetate as we were building the cakes upside down so that when we flipped them, the bright orange puree design would stand out against the white yogurt mousse. I think that came out well, so yay me, goddammit. The taste was sour, but in a good way, at least as far as I was concerned.



And finally, while I think this was the best-tasting, it was one of the rougher "team experiences." This was our Mochaccino. I suggested making little chocolate cups and saucers to put the layers of chocolate sponge, dark coffee mousse and Italian cream in, and I was the one who got to do all the chocolate work, which I was happy about because I need the practice.

The chocolate cups and saucers turned out really well, I thought, as did the various stuff inside, but I can’t claim credit for the perfect Italian cream mousse on top, as all I did for that was stand there and watch as Chef redid it for us. Though Zesty and I did do the piping and the sprinkling of chocolate paillette feuillitine (sorry for the misspelled French... they’re just fancy-pantsed cripy bits, after all). To the left of ours, you can see another team’s version of the same components.



I’m looking forward to this week. We have petit fours due that are half done, one team project cake and two individual projects, one completely of our own creation, so if it’s screwed up I’ll have no one but myself to blame. Which pleases me.