Pastry Chef School: Blueberries, Peaches, Rhubarb, Strawberries and Raspberries desserts
“I told Nick Muncy, a 3 Michelin Star pastry chef, I’m his biggest flan”
This week in pastry school we plated a bunch of stunning & delicious desserts: Peaches & Ginger dessert, Rhubarb & Hibiscus dessert, Blueberry & Vanilla dessert, Strawberry & Buttermilk dessert, and Passion Fruit & Raspberry Mille feuille. Many of those desserts were made with Nick Muncy, former pastry chef of Coi, and current awesome editor, writer and photographer of Toothache magazine. You could say I’m his biggest Flan.
This Peach and Ginger Dessert looks and tasted amazing. Here’s what’s on the plate:
- Ginger “Frozen Marshmallow”: It’s a swiss meringue folded into whipped gelatin ginger juice and then frozen. Once frozen we stamp out circles and place at the bottom of a soup bowl.
- “Peach Broth”: It’s peach juice w/ sugar, acid and salt that’s strained through a chinois, brought to a boil and strained through a coffee filter.
- Drizzle of olive oil
- Compressed Peaches: compressed w/ 10% sugar and cut into chunks.
- Micro Basil
- Individually plucked leafs of edible flowers
This Rhubarb and Hibiscus Dessert is another stunning and delicious dessert by Chef Nick. Here’s what’s on the plate:
- A big dollop of Strawberry Fluid Gel: strawberry juice extracted using a seran wrapped baine marie, combined with syrup and agar-agar and then made into a fluid gel.
- Rhubarb “Broth”: Rhubarb scrap and 1:2 sugar:water syrup cooked until the rhubarb turns to mush, strained , combined with 0.1% xantham and left to cool.
- Poached Rhubarb: make a liquid from 2:1 syrup, hibiscus and rhubarb cooked until rhubarb turnes to mush. Pour the hot liquid over presentation cut rhubarb, vac pack, and steam at 84C until tender for 4–6m.
- Tuile round. Filled with Coconut Cream (coconut milk, gelatin and sugar) from a CO2 Siphon.
- Hibiscus Fluid Gel drops on top of the tuile
- Rhubarb Chips: Thinly sliced rhubarb immersed in hot 1:1 isomalt : water syrup + hibiscus. It’s then drained and dehydrated on acetate.
- Individually plucked leafs from edible flowers
Chef’s Nick last beautiful and delicious dessert: Blueberry and Vanilla. Here’s what’s on this plate:
- Blueberry sauce: blueberries boiled in a 1:3 sugar:water syrup w/ agar, strained, blended and combined with a enough lemon juice to make it liquidy and tasty.
- Vanilla Cake: A sponge made by folding a french meringue into cake batter, baked and cut into rounds.
- Blueberries and dried dates tossed in blueberry sauce
- Whipped Formage Blanc: 2:1 ratio of formage blanc cheese : cream whipped up to stiff peaks, quenelled and placed on top of the blueberries.
- Circle Tuile. Pressed on the cheese to make it perfectly level.
- Blueberry crumble: crumble made with blueberry juice placed on top of the tuile.
This Buttermilk Panna Cotta and Strawberry dessert is a do-over from a dessert we made last week. It has a buttermilk panna cotta, strawberry sauce, compressed diced strawberries, crushed violet meringue and micro-basil leafs.
I really like the simplicity of this Breton Tart w/ Manchego cheese and caramelized figs. The base is a simple Breton 3" tart. The filling is manchengo cheese whipped up with cream cheese and balsamic. The topping is 3mm sliced figs, covered in sugar and caramelized with a brulee torch. And to decorate there are a few slices of manchengo cheese.
This Mille Feuille was a dream to make. The dough itself is inverted puff dough cut into 3"x1" rectangles. On top of each sheet there’s alternating dotted passion fruit pastry cream and raspberries (in a 2x5 grid) and a thin splash of versawhip passion fruit syrup. We then stack two layers on top of each other.
How to make inverted puff dough? Inverted puff dough is like normal puff dough, but with the butter being on the outside and dough being on the inside. To make the butter more pliable we paddle with AP flour, roll the butter mixtures to the right dimensions (dough width x 2+ 1", dough height) and chill. We then wrap the dough block in the butter block and sheet out between silpat. The first two turns were made between silpats and the next two turns are made like regular puff dough.
This Chocolate Soufflé w/ Cardamom Ice cream tastes delicious right out of the oven. The contrast between the chocolate and cardamom is a great flavour combination, and the contrast between the steaming hot souffle and the frozen ice cream has great interplay. To add the cardamom ice cream we punch a small hole on top of the souffle with a the tip of a spoon, and drop in a quenelle of ice cream.
Why did this souffle not deflate? I was pretty confused about how this magical souffle stays up and doesn’t deflate. The secret is cornstarch. Looks like it sets the whole thing up.
Tuiles are magic. We made a bunch of desserts this week using Tuiles. It’s just powdered isomalt creamed into butter, combined with egg whites and pastry flour. For the purple dough we substituted 200g egg whites with 180g blueberry juice and 25g egg white powder.
To shape tuiles we used a 1mm high stencil, filled it with an offset, leveled off and baked at 350°F until golden brown. When filling in the stencils there’s plenty of room for creativity. For square and circle tuiles just fill different shaped stencils. For multi color tuiles pipe a 2mm border, pipe diagonal lines in one colour and adjacent diagonal lines in another color. You can even leave some empty space in the middle.
To fold tuiles we had a non-convection oven at 350°F standing by. We placed each straight tuile on parchment paper about 1.5 times the height of the tuile and a bit wider. Each parchment was placed on an upside down sheet tray and baked for less than a minute just to make the tuiles pliable. Once pulled from the oven we roll the parchment with the tuile still on it around an extra small rolling pin. After a minute the tuile sets up as a folded tuile.
Read more about my adventures in pastry school for reading about last week’s desserts:
