"Sexy Desserts" & Six Cakes

UPDATE: Here is the video of the news segment featuring my desserts.


Source: http://www.wfmj.com/Global/category.asp?C=83318&nav=menu491_4

The restaurant that I work at is going to offer breakfast to its patrons so I was asked to make pastries such as muffins and danish to accompany the gourmet coffee. I did not get a chance to finish making these items on the day I was asked so I decided to go in on my day off and make some quick muffins. I worked at my other job at 6:00AM that day and figured it would take me about 2 hours to make the muffins.

When I arrived at work I was tired and one of the owners of the restaurant came to me and asked, "would you be able to put together three desserts to be on the news tomorrow?" My automatic response was, "yes..." in my head I was saying "OMG WHAT!!!!" He said that he wanted something summery, light and "sexy." I am not sure why, but I have been wanting to make napoleons for a while so that was one of the three. After that I remembered that Ina made meringue cups and strawberries are starting to peak so that also came to mind. He told me that he could use the triple chocolate mousse cake I made the other day so I actually only had to make two.

The meringues needed to bake for two hours and then rest in the oven for another 4. I knew that I had to get those in the oven before I started anything else.

After I had the meringues whipped, piped and in the oven I cut disks of puff pastry and started those baking in another oven. I found a recipe online for a lemon and strawberry napoleon so I used that as the foundation. While the puff pastry was baking I made lemon curd and put it in the cooler to chill. When the puff pastry was done I split each round into three layers. While plating this dessert I kept on hearing in my head, "It has to look sexy" the first attempt looked as Ina would say, "like a dog's breakfast" I asked one of the new chefs if she had any suggestions and she was such a wonderful help. She said she loved plating food and came up with the final plate design that I presented. After we had the lemon curd and raspberry sauce on the plate we both agreed that it needed some green. The only green herb that we had in the cooler was basil. Basil and lemon go together well so I garnished the plate with a chiffonade of basil. Have a look...

This is the plate design that the other chef came up with....


From here I began to build the napoleon...
A layer of puff pastry


After I put a spoonful of lemon curd on the pastry I topped that off with some freshly whipped cream which had finely chopped basil and more lemon curd folded into it then strawberries.


These layers were repeated and then topped with a final puffed disk dusted with powdered sugar. Here is the final dish. I garnished with some fresh basil from my own garden.


After the meringues were done I placed them on a blue plate dusted with powdered sugar. They were then filled with fresh whipped cream and a ladle full of cold cooked strawberries and blueberries.

Here is the meringue and cream ready for the berries...


I had to go into work this morning to plate all of these desserts up so they were ready for television. I did not want to add the berries to the meringue until the last minute because I did not want it to look like a mess. When the news people came into the kitchen they asked if the desserts were ready and I told them that the meringue just needed to be topped with the berries and then two mint leaves. They asked me if I wanted to do that on camera. My eyes got huge and I replied, "no thank you." HAHA they had the idea to have the anchor man do it on camera. It was all very surreal to watch this happen to something I made!

The meringue that they did for the news segment was actually taken to another room after they finished filming to be used in another segment so I do not actually have a picture of that one. Here is a picture of the test meringue which I assembled yesterday.


The third and final dessert they showed was one of the triple chocolate mousse cakes. Here it is plated....


Here they are discussing my desserts.


I still can not believe that any of this happened!!!! The news segements will be on tomorrow morning. If possible I will try and record video of it and maybe even post it!

In other cake news Rabbit Hole is opening at The Oakland Center for the Arts this weekend and they needed a few birthday cakes. My mom and I worked on these all day and we are quite happy with how they came out. Here is a cake collage!


It is true what the president of the board for The Oakland called me I am "the busiest bee!"