Preparing for the Buffet

This week started out a bit slow, but it definitely picked up.

The secret is a dollop of gooey pecan caramel in the middle

I mentioned before that our class is going to host a dessert buffet. All we knew was that it is going to be Halloween themed. I'm sure I wasn't the only one with lots of ideas racing through her mind. But when Monday rolled around we found out that the Chef had already prepicked all the recipes and that we drew them out of a hat, talk about disappointment! But in industry, you usually don't get to make up your own desserts anyway. My partner and I drew passion fruit curd with coconut tapioca in a test tube. Not really Halloweeny if you ask me. For the four person action station, we drew cotton candy.

Cute holders for our cotton candy

Right away M and I threw out the gelee part of the dessert. Gelee is essentially a jello and we didn't think it would work well in a test tube with a tiny spoon. Instead we replaced it with strawberry poprocks! We found some containers of various sized poprocks and then coated them in strawberry flavoured white chocolate for protection. (Moisture and poprocks makes for sad soggy sugar balls.) M wanted the curd and tapioca to be set at angles and I didn't want to overpower the dessert with poprocks. With those ideas, this is what came out!

The chocolate garnish follows the poprock spiral

It does look more Christmasey than Halloweeny, I have to agree, but no one complained about our colour palate. We may change the poprocks and chocolate garnish to an orange colour for the final product.

Here's a sneak peek at some of the other desserts that will appear on the buffet.

Monte Carlo: layers of chocolate cake, apricot jam, almond and meringue

Milk chocolate popcorn panna cotta with salted caramel and an orange poprock garnish

Awesome pierced tongue black cherry macarons

This is something I've been experimenting with. If I can get it to work, I want to make it a part of our action station.

The dessert buffet will be at lunch time at the 4Nines cafeteria on October 30th. Definitely come check us out if you can! Did I mention there'll be deep fried homemade oreos and deep fried dark chocolate caramels? :P