Take Two, They're Small

Our class was responsible for making and serving the individual pastries and petit fours for this week’s pre-graduation hootenany buffet lunch. Each team had to do one of each, the petit fours being our interpretation of one of Chef’s recipes and the petit gateaux of our own (team) design.

Here’s a shot of the petit gateaux Zesty and I came up with, loosely inspired by the chocolate-ancho Volcano Cake I did for my final tasting on externship in Vegas:

The dome itself is three inches wide at the base, to give you a sense of scale. The garnish is chocolate cinnamon sticks (chocolate made to look like the spice and then rolled in cinnamon) and candied orange zest. Inside, under the dark chocolate glaze, is a cinnamon-pecan sable, layer of orange compote, layer of chocolate-ancho flourless sponge and a chocolate-cinnamon ganache, all surrounded in a caramel mousse.

I wasn’t thrilled with the overall taste (the ganache was too firm, the ancho too timid) though I did like the sable and sponge layers on their own. The photo above does not show the Issue Zesty and I faced.

For whatever reason, one of the two trays of domes we glazed began to melt during service, the glaze pooling at the foot of the dome and the caramel leaking through the top. I may have undercooked the glaze, or Zesty may have glazed that tray with the glaze too warm (the tray I glazed didn’t have as much of a melting problem), though I suspect the real culprit was that our gelatin in the caramel mousse overbloomed. Looking back, I remember that gelatin sitting there in water for more than an hour while Zesty had to make and remake the soft caramel because of an error in appropriate agitation. Our caramel mousse never really froze and was semi-liquid at room temperature.

Sigh.

In any case, it was a good learning experience that has given me ideas about what I would do if I had to use that flavor profile again.

Here’s a shot of a couple of the plates on our table for service, showing all five petit gateaux:

From left to right, a goat cheese cheesecake with raspberries (interesting but ultimately too goaty for me), our spicy chocolate caramel domes, pre-meltdown (we were still able to serve most of them), white chocolate mint, blood orange cheesecake that allegedly had cardamom in it, though I never tasted it, another row of white chocolate mint and a strawberry shortcake with honey balsamic that was tasty.

Each team also did one petit four; Chef assigned us the components and we were supposed to figure out how to assemble them. The photo below is of the neat little serving display Chef helped us make - it’s all chocolate, and went with the chocolate showpiece he whipped up in minutes.

The white oval is coconut, yuzu and lime, though all I could taste was coconut. The too-cute mini caramel apple is, in fact, a melon ball of apple dipped in caramel and garnished with a caramel stick. The mini-savarin (doughnut shape) is milk chocolate chai and the chocolate-glazed green thing is pistachio and orange. The chocolate pyramid with the banana chip on top (actually a plantain, deep-fried by yours truly) was the one Zesty and I did. On a chocolate base, it’s a layer of dark chocolate coffee mousse, sauteed bananas and ginger mousse. The whole thing is an inch and a half tall. I’m not a big cooked banana fan, but it tasted ok. Not something I’d make again, though.

And below is a class photo. I hesitated to post it, because I do want to keep some veil of plausible deniability about this blog, but then I decided heck, I’m puttin’ it up. I think it’s a flattering photo of all my classmates and me, and quite frankly I love Chef’s expression. It perfectly captures his personality.

That’s his showpiece in the center foreground, too. And yes, that’s everyone left in my class. Sort of like The Fellowship of the Nine. Only without the fellowship part.