Tuesday, March 16 - Friday, March 19

This past week was killer stressful. On top of the challenging work at school, my computer died on me...

My classmates can attest to the stress zits on my worried face.

On Tuesday we had our first real team work challenge. We broke into teams of 8 to create 15 identical plated desserts. We had to use phyllo dough, make a tempered chocolate garnish and to be honest, I cant remember the rest of the regulations, that's how fuzzy I am. I digress. Here is our take on a re-invented Neapolitan. We used flourless chocolate cake on the bottom, a strawberry Diplomat (a really smooth and tasty mousse), with a graham cracker layer which was topped with more mousse, creme Chantilly and white chocolate. Our sauces were chocolate and a berry coulis...



Here is what our table looked like. We teamed up with three of the girls from the other class.




On Wednesday, we did what Chef Rocque called "A Reality Check" otherwise known as the "Top Chef Challenge."

We were given six ingredients and had to use four of them to create a plated dessert. We had to break into teams of two so Vicki and I worked together.

Here is what we got to choose from:

Fresh yeast

oats

any kind of berry

pears

red wine

olive oil

I meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeean.

So we went with an oat tart shell filled with a raspberry curd (ahem, Chef asked for our recipe :-) ), pears that we poached in red wine and simple syrup, chocolate sauce, rum caramel sauce, almond "comet," topped with a raspberry.

Here is what some of the other teams created:

One day before class, Monica found a pair of roller blades in JM's trunk which she immediately put on and started tooling around the parking lot in... Having made PLENTY of fun of me in the past for owning a pair, Pharyn grabbed mine out of the CRV to join Monica.

This thoroughly made my day.

For our next challenge, we were broken down into teams of four to create a dessert that utilized chocolate fondant cake, two sauces, an ice cream and marshmallows.

Me, Monica, Pharyn and Vicki created chocolate fondant cake topped with caramelized bananas, a peanut butter marshmallow topped with a tempered chocolate cigarette and a rum caramel sauce with a banana creme anglaise. Chef said if he had to suggest something to change, he wouldn't change anything.

Just sayin.

Friday was yet another plated dessert challenge (just remembering my week brings the feeling of a not-so-pleasant clogged pore on my face) where we were required to make two sauces, use apples or pears and phyllo dough. We hollowed out and baked our apple in cinnamon, sugar and butter and made a phyllo cup for it. We made caramel rum sauce again cause, well, its awesome, chocolate, cinnamon ice cream that everyone in class thought was super tasty, and topped it with a sugar coil.

This past weekend has been about putting my portfolio for this class together (major thanks to Jeff for letting me use his computer and printer ALL day Saturday to do so) while biting my nails over the three and a half days of finals that looms ahead of me...