Crepe Day (and Ice Cream!)

There's nothing like ice-cream or sorbet when temperatures hit record numbers, nearing 100 degrees. What's even better, is fresh ice-cream, right from the machine. Plated desserts today involved volunteer tasks for ice-cream and sorbet. In class, I generally don't volunteer for tasks since someone else always eagerly raises their hand-and the tasks tend to be things like, pull the top of mint leaves off for decorating. But, today when asked for volunteers to make cinnamon ice-cream I for once eagerly offered my help. Hopefully I'll get to learn sorbet soon (and use the sweet refractometer). I learned, which seems obvious now, that when making the base for frozen desserts you have to over exaggerate the flavoring since when they're frozen the taste is not as easily detected by your taste buds.

Orange Crepes with Orange Caramel Sauce and Blueberry Sorbet
We spent the morning making our various batters, sauces, and in my case, ice-cream. We had about 90 min to make two crepe batters, ganach, pastry cream, prep puff pastry for tomorrow, and make ice-cream while keeping everything clean. Seems like enough time until you realize its been 45 minutes, and you aren't nearly as far as you had hoped. The ice-cream was great, and its incredible how good it tastes using a professional machine and tasting it literally as it comes out.

Chocolate Crepes with Pear Compote and Cinnamon Ice-Cream

We ended our day with plating the chocolate marquise we made yesterday paired with cranberry compote, chocolate sauce and a mint creme anglaise. The cake was super rich, which was evident from the micro-bite we were suggested to take (those who didn't follow ended up nauseous after three plating exercises). Very decadent and "old world french."

Overall, a really enjoyable day. I was nervous about making crepes, since I never have before! But it wasn't that bad and after a few attempts they were coming out perfectly! I want to also play around with some savory applications at home. Tomorrow is more tarts, which I'm not ecstatic about, but I am curious to see what the accompaniments will be!