Archives Under "delicious" (RSS)
Cake Donuts.
26 January 2010 | Ten 01, delicious, dessert, pastries, plated dessert | 4 Responses
2010: The Future is Now.
7 January 2010 | Ten 01, cake, delicious, dessert, faithful readers, pastries, plated dessert, recipe | 5 Responses
Two thousand and motherfucking TEN?!? The future is now my faithful readers. I command the powers of the internet in my pants. I make ice cream base in an immersion circulator. As a race we fringe on symbiosis with technology; and I can’t wait to realize this next phase of evolution. Anyway, I been busy as shit. The holidays kicked my ass; and with in-laws in town and hell of prep, plating and me plowing through it all it went by in a pop! Shit 2009 was a pop, a bang, a blast, dice cast and rolled and truth be told past year was fucking fast. I turned thirty, I got married, I’ve become a half way decent pastry chef and an annoying blogger. I’ve made some bad-assed desserts and also learned some killer savory food. Pretty standard actually. Looking to the new year, I’m hoping to step up my game. Turn it up to eleven so to speak. I just need to work harder, cleaner. The desserts will be smaller, more precise. Flavors? Louder. Here’s a recipe bitches. I adapted it from one of the best recipes I’ve learned in a long time.
Graham Cracker Sponge Cake
250 g soft butter
375 g sugar
5 g salt
6 eggs
375 g fine ground graham cracker crumbs.
7.5 g baking powder
100 g A.P. flour
1. Preheat your convection oven to 300 F. Spray and line with parchment one half sheet pan.
2. Cream the butter, sugar and salt light and fluffy in the bowl of a stand mixer.
3. Weigh the crumbs, baking powder, and flour into a bowl and whisk them together well.
4. Add the eggs 2 at a time, allowing the batter to fully absorb each addition of eggs. Scrape the bowl twice during this step.
5. Scape the bowl again and add the dry ingredients all at once. Mix the batter on low speed until homogeneous.
6. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and bake 12 minutes, rotate the pans, and bake an additional 6 to 8 minutes, or until golden brown and springy. Use as a base for a no bake cheesecake or serve it warm with a cream cheese ice cream.
Pootang 3.0.
18 November 2009 | Ten 01, chocolate, creative presentation of the week, delicious, faithful readers, plated dessert, recipe | 2 Responses
It’s funny how one idea leads to another and sometimes the most obvious idea is the best one. Looking at my Fat Spouse dessert, it was good; hell it was great even. What it lacked however was a warm element. Something to start melting that malted milk ice cream and pretzel bark. Something rich and fatty. Like pootang…BREAD pootang. All peanut butter chips and compressed devil’s food cake stratifying a rich brioche custard. There’s been some discussion of pootang technique in the kitchen as of late, and one thing again leading to another, I’m now pureeing my base. It creates an even, dense, almost cakey texture. The chunks of devils food are compressed in the vacuum sealer then diced. Finally a good use for that bomber technique. You can get cool potions this way, but a realized dessert was tricky. Now how about that fancy cruise ship garnish? I got the idea from a dish wifey had dining when we dined at Spago Beaver Creek. A simple piped lattice of tempered chocolate onto acetate, scored and bent in a PVC half pipe. The other tile of tempered chocolate underneath the ice cream is a buffer between the cold scream and the warm pootang. Cocoa nibs help it grip. I brought back the dulce dessert Watchmen blood drip plate saucing technique for good measure. This fucker gets oohed and ahhed every time it hits the table. Here’s the recipe for enjoyment of my faithful readers.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Bread Pudding
6 oz butter at room temperature
6 oz sugar
2 oz dark chocolate
4 oz peanut butter
5 eggs
3 cups heavy cream
12 -15 brioche buns
2 cups diced compressed devils food cake that has been diced
1 bag Reeses peanut butter chips
1. Cream the butter and the sugar with the paddle. While they are achieving light and fluffy in your stand mixer, melt the chocolate and peanut butter over a double boiler.
2. When the sugar and butter are light and fluffy, add the melted chocolate and peanut butter. Mix until well incorporated, scraping the bowl as necessary.
3. Add the eggs one by one, scraping and incorporating.
4. Switch to the whisk and add the heavy cream on low speed. Keep the machine going while you prep the bread.
5. Cut the bread into large chunks. Take the custard off the machine, add the bread and mix thoroughly. You need enough bread to make a messy paste. Too much and your pootang will be dry, to little and it will be a custardy mess. Cover the mix and let it soak over night. This is essential to chingon pootang.
6. Next day pull the base and puree it in the food processor. Transfer to a large bowl and mix in the chunks and chips.
7. Prepare one half sheet tray with sprayed parchment. Pour and spread the base into an even layer. It should ride the rim of the pan. Cover with plastic wrap, then cover with aluminum foil. This will create a nice even top.
8. Bake in a 300 degree convection oven for about 25 minutes, rotating once. It is normal for the pootang to souffle a bit while baking. When it is done it should be dry (baked looking.)
9. Cool completely before slicing to de-molding desired shape. Reheat portions in the microwave for 20 seconds.
Toasted Hazelnut Cake
25 October 2009 | Ten 01, delicious, dessert, plated dessert | 7 Responses
This here dessert is like a bong hit. It’s all “Dude, It’ll be all hazelnut, banana and mascarpone, man!” I based it on an excellent brunch item I had over at Belly Timber, a Stuffed French Toast. It combined house made Nutella, mascarpone, hazelnuts, and a specially made brioche. It was the first time I ate with David and didn’t have the Chicken Waffle. Anyway, I make a hazelnut sponge cake, the same recipe I used for the Grilled Almond Cake, I just switched the nuts. This formula is moist and buttery; and works with any nut. This dessert is selling well so far, no surprise considering the banana factor. Maybe a certain Chef will see fit to add her recipe in the comments! Thanks for your patience with this blog everybody who is still reading. The web is bloated with food blogs, everybody’s cooking!! The ice cream recipe is one from one of my favorite Chefs, David Lebovitz; author of The Perfect Scoop.
Fat Spouse.
23 August 2009 | chocolate, delicious, faithful readers, plated dessert, recipe | 7 Responses
Anyone who gets Food Arts probably saw this presentation on page 81 of the July issue; yep I totally stole it. The original creator is Chef Sandro Michell, pastry master for Alain Ducasse’s Adour in New York’s St. Regis Hotel. To say that he is a bad ass is a bit of an understatement, to say that his work will be aspired to and emulated the world over is a point of fact. Who knows if I’m even the first to bite his presentation? The design of it is perfect; each bite a perfect portion of the flavors and textures. Faithful readers know of my love of cylinders, this set up was a natural progression from my dulce de leche logs. Chef Sandro streamlines the process by rolling up acetate and piping in the soft ice cream. Anyway, on to the flavors. I’ve always wanted to do a plated dessert version of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby, so here it fucking is!! Devils food cake, chocolate peanut butter pretzel bark, malted milk ice cream. This dessert had been a fun little path of progressions for me. It’s first incarnation was done like Tony Martin’s Brownie Crunchie, a peanut butter and pretzel layer was spread warm onto the cake then set, and sliced. With that method, the pretzels got soggy; hydrating from the moisture in the simple syrup soaked sponge. I was riding my bike home on Friday night and it hits me: bark!! What I wanted was bark, like we had in Zermatt!! Just with pretzels instead of almonds and shit. Crunch factor, achieved!! The plate is sauced with chocolate and peanut butter caramel, sooooo fucking good!! When I first plated it up, I tweeted a picture of it, which caused a bit of a stir. Next day my buddy Rich was in to eat it; fucking Twitter, huh? The other cool thing about this dessert is the cocktail pairing: White Russian. Naturally you want milk with this right? Or cream? And vodka, right? Kaluha? We all know Kelley makes a killer Caucasian, it’s perfect!!
Pretzel Bark
6 oz milk chocolate
6 oz dark chocolate
6 oz creamy peanut butter
3 cups loose chopped pretzel sticks
1. Melt the first three ingredients over a double boiler.
2. Stir in the pretzels and pour onto a sheet pan with a silpat or parchment.
3. Chill the bark for 30 minutes before cutting into desired shapes. Store in an airtight container in the fridge.
IPNC pt.II
10 August 2009 | delicious, eating, people | 4 Responses
I can still hear the rapid-fire “smek smek smek smek” of bare feet on solid pour polyurethane. As he rounded the first bend I looked at myPhone’s stop watch and realized he was going to beat his time. He challenged himself to get 1:25 and he was way ahead. Chepe was running this track barefoot; and he was doing it fast, burning it. Moments before he sat on the edge of his seat, pysching himself up, amping himself. Moments after he had to lay on the ground, about to puke passionate, pumping vessels throbbing in his head. As he lay there panting, my mind rewinded the days events. The fun-as-shit-I-love-being-a-chef lunch dish up. A dip in the fountain, a boozy aftrnoon nap; a reprieve from relentless heat, a snorey slumber. Soon after as we lined up for salmon and started to spot other Chefs, enjoying service or fine wine; poured by more familiar faces. The fish roasted over a long trench I couldn’t get too close, I was sizzled, scorched. A trench of fire!! We ate salmon and salads in the sinking sunlight. There was also pork. We drank wine with decadent abandon; swilling with senseless pretention and simply sloshing out as the next selction sauntered up smiling. Our table mates included the former director of the American Heart Association, his friends and relatives. Behind us nearby eating; the Chef from Toro Bravo; we felt friendly in good company. Ditching our table at dusk we hit the dessert buffet and then the still scalding fire. A couple chasing each other around the trench made me grin. It was fast approaching the opening of the Library Wines so we turned to the center of the venue. Soon after we had more sips to swirl and ran into my old friend Jeremy, he had also worked the event and was now partying. After tasting so much wine it all began to taste the same we bounced, we knew of a secret stairwell somm soiree with more wine and friends. In a flash my head hits the present, the way-back machine having caught up with itself. Fuck I love days like this. My best buddy sprawled supine below trying to catch his breath, and me in the stands, reeling.
Off Site Dish Up.
30 July 2009 | Ten 01, blueberries, delicious, dessert, plated dessert | 2 Responses
We found ourselves perched precariously with too tall speed racks in the back of a pick up. As the truck’s engine revved ready to pop the curb my mind flashes through this pasts weeks events. Moving tons of product, slaving mad and crazy hours. Tarts. Shit tons of little tartlettes. Cookies. Over five hundred; twenty some odd pounds of dough. White Chocolate Panna Cotta. Four hundred of them, forty eight at a time. Cleaning and processing six flats of blueberies. The truck struggling to summit the curb forces me from my reverie, the speed rack tilting, threatening to spill its payload. Perez and I look at each other, shaking heads. Wham!! The truck nails a huge rock and we almost lose our shit. The shits were up on two wheels, I dropped and tucked against our stacks of plates and dug in , gripping. In that split second I knew I’d lost the load, that I’d blew the mission. We braced against the rocking and steadied the racks, cussing and kicking and carrying on. I felt in that instant…peace. I’d known it was out of my hands, beyond me. I couldn’t be more prepared for this event than I was. I had my product, I had my boy, I knew we had this. Right until it all was about to fly out of the back of this fucking truck, out of my control. Thankfully, none of that happened. The truck rocked back level, the speed racks clunked upright. We rolled silently over the grass to the plating area. We had a few hours earlier spread the custards out onto about a dozen sheet pans, each on a little square of acetate; easy to slide off onto chilled plates. They thawed slowly in the fridge for about three hours, and finished perfectly in the spanking afternoon sun. The entire plating, 275 plates in the end, took about eighteen minutes. We had so many hands helping, I just poked around, answering questions and pulling fucked up plates off to be replaced with perfect ones. All said and done, we nailed it. The silky custards were ice cold but not frozen, the compote thick and rich, the simple essence of blueberry. We retreated from the heat to the cool of our dorm room to pound tall boys and take a nap. I slumbered happily elated, stoked to be a chef that day.
Simple Bacon Cornbread.
28 July 2009 | bacon, delicious, faithful readers, recipe | 6 Responses
This is based on a polenta cake recipe I found on the web somewhere. The oil from the original recipe is substituted with rendered bacon fat, then the bits are mixed into the batter and it’s baked. I like to buy the bacon scraps from the meat counter at New Seasons for this; it’s already cut up. I’ve been tweaking and working this recipe for a bit, it’s almost ready. Ready enough to share with my faithful readers. It still evolves, however. My friends ask me to make this for picnics and such, this one here was for an Independence Day party at my neighbor Damien’s house. I’m glad I made it that day; it caught the attention of someone who wanted the recipe for something awesome. As i started to put the recipe together; rendering the bacon and sifting the dry ingredients, I realized I wasn’t going to have enough fat. Fortunately, I had some pork belly scraps in the freezer, also a deli cup of the rendered fat. Hooray for melted pig flesh!
- Cut most the bacon into small dice. Leave some bigger chunks for chewy treats throughout.
- Render the bacon in your 10 inch cast iron skillet. I recently learned to put some water in the bottom of the pan and cover it, steaming the bacon some to get at that delicious fat. Remove the lid after about 8 minutes, and brown the bacon. If you use a 10 inch cast iron skillet like I do, bake the cornbread right in that pan without washing it.
- Weigh the dry ingredients into a bowl and whisk to combine.
- In a separate bowl, weigh the liquid ingredients and whisk to combine.
- Whisk the wet into the dry and mix to a smooth batter. Stir in the canned corn. Stir in the bacon.
- Bake in desired form at 325 until golden brown and springy, about 12-15 minutes
That’s Fucking Delicious.
22 July 2009 | Ten 01, creative presentation of the week, delicious, dessert, plated dessert | 10 Responses
Why is this dessert going nowhere? I love this dessert. It’s a tasty refreshing and interesting treat. I love this. I love it almost as much as some other complete flops I’ve created. We all know what a float is; a frothy icy treat, simply ice cream and soda. It’s just got a little twist, a little refreshing surprise. It’s blackberries, and corn. That’s right I said fucking corn. Sweet corn ice cream to be exact, I learned it from a recent mentor. It pairs great with the blackberries, the little corpuscles bursting and adding their juice. Corn and berries, who new? So yeah you plop some of the corn ice cream in a frosty glass, cover it with fresh blackberries and homemade blackberry syrup, cover it with club soda or sprite, and Robert’s your father’s brother. I garnish with caramel corn and white chocolate polenta cookies. A good stir with a long spoon will froth it up and blend the flavors. It’s not rocket scientist, it’s just good. I thing people get turned off by corn in ice cream. People want one flavor: vanilla. I bet if I changed the ice cream to that specky pod I’d have a frenzy on my hands. Maybe next week.
Sweet Corn Ice Cream
Faithful Readers.
7 May 2009 | blog, delicious, dessert, faithful readers, plated dessert, shameless self promotion | 6 Responses
For those five or six people that actually read this shit allow me to elucidate, you are not alone! faithful readers are out there, and they’re making dessert. This photo here is a version of the Dessert of Last Year; a chocolate flourless cake made by Ms. Jessie Badley, a culinary student and faithful reader. Apparently the dessert is offered at her cooking college’s restaurant, where it is maued upon with much gusto. It gives me great pleasure to know that someone is out there among the interwebs reading my screwy ideas and bullshit ramblings. So pleasured am I in fact, that I will now publish her email without her permission! Thanks Jessie!!
Hello! I recently found your site online and have become somewhat obsessed. I’ve looked through all your plated desserts and they are beautiful! I am currently enrolled in culinary school as a prospective pastry chef and found your recipe for the chocolate whiskey cake! I am actually making this at school right now for our plated desserts in the restaurant on campus (inspired by your post.) I just wanted to let you know that its genius. I switched out makers mark for Evan Williams (sour mash) and it tastes amazing! So I guess I’m writing to thank you for having an awesome blog and such in depth directions and whatnot. not only do I get a giggle out of your words, but I’ve learned a lot! Keep it coming!