Flavor rut

Occasionally I will look at the desserts I've been making a realize that I'm in a flavor rut. Not that the flavors aren't delicious but I find myself getting bored of constantly doing lemon, coconut, coffee, raspberry, and yes even chocolate. I feel guilty saying that chocolate is that long term relationship that you know you love and you'll always go back to but after so much time you want something a little more exciting. That feels so wrong since chocolate is amazing. Everyone knows chocolate is fantastic, frankly I think even chocolate knows its fantastic. It compliments almost any flavor; but alas, here I am in a flavor rut.

Usually when I get like this I just try to get some new flavor. Something I haven't done in a while or maye a texture I've never tried. This time I asked my boss to get some acai berry purée for me. 

You've heard of acai but if you've never tried it you're missing out. The flavor is pretty subtle the purée tastes a bit like tea, somewhat sweet but nothing overpowering. Since I wasn't sure of the taste at first I decided to make it into a jelly. I won't lie I love making jellies, if I ever have a fruit and I'm unsure what to do with it, I'll make a jelly. After trying out the Acai berry jelly and realizing what a subtle taste it was I decided to pair them with something tart and not overly sweet. Raspberry!

Sophia suggested that I make a mousse out of the organic raspberries we had in the cooler. So we made a Raspberry Mousse Bombe with Acai berry Jelly. It's a bit tart, it's a bit sweet and it's all around yummy. You try something it might not always work and perhaps next week I'll be able to try something a bit more daring with the acai puree that I have but when it comes to experimenting with flavors I suppose there is nothing wrong with the research.

Tiramisu revisited

So a few posts ago I mentioned that I wanted to try making a bombe version of tiramisu. Well that's exactly what I did at work today. I made a milk chocolate mousse infused with coffee extract, folded in some mascarpone cheese and lightened it up with some whipped cream. There is a bit of lady fingers inside to give it a bit of a crunch and break up all that mousse and chocolate sponge. 

For the first time I didn't soak it in alcohol. I couldn't tell you why tonight I just wasn't feeling the rum or wine. Usually alcohol is one of the background flavors (I think that's a post for another time) but I was pretty content with the way this came out. Again it was a somewhat collaberation with my coworker Sophia. It's funny because is her off day but that doesn't stop my from texting her "what do you think? Milk or dark chocolate?" "How does this look? Is that enough cocoa powder?" Sorry Sophia you know I need your expert opinion. 

Best part about trying something different? Always have to try it! What you want might not always work but I do love the research. 

Mint chocolate

Recently my chef has allowed us to have a bit more freedom when it comes to the desserts for the restaurant. Well he always allowed us a great deal of creative freedom but recently he said "we need different shapes!"  Naturally Sophia & I jumped at the chance to try something different. Our first differently shaped dessert is called the minty rosa. 

We named it after our coworker rosa because she loves chocolate mint. It's actually based on a petit four that I made in pastry school I just made it bigger and better for a dessert. So this dessert is a white chocolate mint mousse with a dark chocolate ganache and a fresh raspberry jelly center. Sophia helped me take it to the next level though. When making the raspberry jelly I usually just use the raspberry purée that we have in the reach-in cooler, but this week we had some beautiful organic raspberries so she puréed and strained them for me. 

Honestly I think the fresh organic raspberries made all the difference. Even our executive chef tasted and loved it. Who knows what we'll come up with next but I cannot wait to eat it. 

Tiramisu: Coffee perfection

Oh tiramisu. Where I work we can hardly keep tiramisu inspired desserts in stock. As soon as that first cocoa powder covered dessert is in the display case people are asking, "is that tiramisu?" "Can I have another slice?" "What do you mean you're out of tiramisu?" "When will you have more?"

Tiramisu is an Italian dessert that consists of lady fingers, mascarpone cheese and Marsala wine(or maybe a delicious dark rum instead). When reading up on the dessert (everyone does that right?) I learned that tiramisu roughly translates to  pick me up. Tiramisu is a dessert that is telling you to pick it up and shove it in your face. Okay maybe it's more polite than that.  

 When I adapt the flavor for the restaurant I don't use lady fingers but I do soak the yellow sponge cake with coffee and alcohol. The frosting has a light coffee flavor and it then sprinkled with cocoa powder. Truthfully the mascarpone, to me anyways, doesn't add much flavor. My coworker tells me that I really don't have to add it as no one would notice with the coffee and wine overpowering the light flavor of the cheese, but I suppose I'm slightly traditional when it comes to flavors like this. 

So tiramisu has everything anyone could want. It's a combination of cheese, chocolate, coffee and wine. Perhaps I could adapt it into bombe form, a tiramisu mousse with lady fingers in the center. I might have to try that tomorrow. 

Today is Memorial Day so I'm sure the restaurant will run out of the nine tiramisu cakes I made last night. 

Cakes, cakes, cakes

Pina Colada Cake

Before I went to pastry school I made cakes at home. I made cakes the way I imagine most do, boxed cake mix, can of frosting or two (one for me and one for the cake). I have really fond memories of helping my mother make cakes for her office parties when I was younger. It was always my job to make sure there was no extra batter left in the bowl before washing it.

By the time I got to pastry school I had this silly notion that I was pretty good at building and decorating cakes. I thought to myself ," This part will be easy." How wrong I was. When you're at home you might not think anything of spending a half hour on a cake. When I was in school my chef informed our class that this would not do. In his way he told us that if we spent more than 30 minutes on a basic cake that any employer would more than likely thank us for our time. He did that frequently. If you can't write in chocolate no one will hire you, if you can't clean as you go no one will hire you, if you can't build a cake in less than 30 minutes no one will hire you. I'm not entirely sure that's really true but I know that it pushed me to work faster, cleaner and all around more inefficiently. 

When I was in school I admit it I couldn't build a cake in less than 30 minutes. In case you're unsure about what I mean by build a cake that includes: trimming, cutting, syruping, filling, frosting, and decorating. In fact it wasn't even until I started at my first job that I really started getting better at it. That might have something to do with amount of cakes that I had to decorate; once you have to make more than 20 cakes in a day you start to develop a rhythm. The older ladies at work (who have been doing this for longer than I've been breathing) showed me their tips and tricks, a fact that I'm extremely grateful for.

My average time is down to roughly 7 minutes per cake, perhaps a little longer if the decoration is more

Chocolate Peanut butter cake

complicated. It's really a thing of beauty to step back and realize how far you've come. Even in the two years that I've been working I realize that I have so much more to learn. Sometimes I think about going to visit my chef to tell him "Hey remember how I couldn't build one cake in less than 30 minutes? Well now I can do 10 in one hour!" I think he'd laugh.

The upside of making desserts for a buffet is that they always require a variety so my boss is pretty open to any flavor my coworkers or I want to make. Black forest? Great. Chocolate peanut butter? Delicious. Pina Colada? Watch it because someone might get drunk off dessert.

I also have the added benefit of working with people that inspire me. There will be nights where my coworker Sophie and I start talking about some other dessert completely and by the end of the night we're trying to figure out how to make it into a cake.

Life is sweet. Busy but sweet.