Petit Fors and Custard Cups

This week at school has been super busy. We did a dessert buffet for the Open House on Thursday night, so each of us had to create two mini desserts for the buffet. We had to consider color, shape, flavor, texture, volume, warm/cold, etc.

My two initial ideas were these (click to view them bigger):


The results? Well, I didn't realize just HOW small they had to be, so my idea for the Mayan Chocolate cakes had to be scaled down a bit more than I wanted. I omitted the chantilly cream in the center.My joconde biscuit turned out lighter in color than I intended, so I had to change from a chocolate mousse on top to a bavarian cream so that the colors matched better. Also, the pecans in the ganache were way too big, so they screwed up the uniformity of my display. Argh. I also wanted to make blue chocolate decorations for the tops, but I couldn't get the color I wanted, so I went with dark chocolate instead. My instructor chastised me for using blue, because the French say that the color on the outside needs to indicate the flavor on the inside. Bah! I still think the colors turned out gorgeous.



The other dessert turned out pretty much as I had planned. I decided against the brittle, however, because I didn't want it to get soggy and melt into the custards while they sat in the fridge between Tuesday and Thursday night. I also didn't get to put a cherry jelly inside the chocolate straws - it just wasn't feasible since they're so delicate. These were absolutely delicious, but the lime flavor kind of overpowered the coconut. Boo.