Monday morning, 8AM in the pastry kitchen. Chef Antoine hands out the recipe that says “Douceur Impressionniste”. What’s the meaning of the name I ask and the answer I get is that it’s a sweet kind of dessert that was inspired while he has been in nature, seeing a beautiful combination of colors in the landscape. In his head he came up with this recipe, each part taken from a different place, and put together like that for the first time. It sounded like a complicated 4 layers cake, and this is exactly what it was, but it came out wonderfully and beautifully after all the hard work. We also made souffle which looked good but it was very far from the classic souffle and I wasn’t crazy about the outcome as it is. Was cool to see how the souffle rises in the oven, the excitement in class was undeniable.
Making layer #1: the bottom coconut biscuit, whipping whites of eggs with the machine.
Adding sugar, almonds powder, coconut powder and flour
Folding gently
Spreading over a baking paper, to the oven
When golden and elastic in the middle it's ready
Cutting with the tart mold
Layer #2: Prepping some pears
Boiling them till soft in water and sugar
Pureed to a mash and some cubed for the souffle
Mixing with raspberry frozen puree and boiling, then adding pectin
The second layer placed over the coconut base and put in the fridge
Layer 3: Yolks and Lemon grass leaves
Boiling cream and milk with the lemon grass
Blanching yolks with sugar and whipping some more cream
The blanched yolks cooked in a double boiler with the milk and cream
Gelatin pages
The whipped cream ready to be folded in the other mixture when it's chilled
folded after adding the gelatin
Placed as a third layer
Smoothed down
Forth layer: cream and glucose are boiled with mango puree.
White chocolate
The hot mango cream is poured over the chocolate and gelatin added to this one as well
Drops of red and orange colors
Gently moving them in the mixture
Poured as a forth layer on the cake
Smooth like a mirror
My design
All four layers are set
Coco biscuit, pear and raspberry confiture, lemon grass mousse and mango glasage.
First time we got a tart box 馃檪
For the souffle we buttered the molds
Almond powder instead of sugar to powder the molds
Whipped egg whites to a snowish texture, adding cooked sugar and then adding the puree of pears and some pear liqueur
Placing in the molds with some squares of pears soaked in the pear liqueur
Flatting and decorating the top
mine is on the right
Start rising
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Chef turning his souffles
Taken out of the oven, sprinkle with sugar powder
Crucial moment to take pictures
My souffle out of the oven
Top view
Sprinkled some Matcha - green tea powder
Eaten with the rest of the pear puree. Was really weird dessert. The liqueur was overpowering and the eggy taste was too strong for me. I have to try a savory souffle soon
lemon grass? what kind of lemon grass is that?
and, what was the chef doing in the sugar video?
… in any case it looks sooo goood…
leaves of the lemon grass, first time i saw it too. about the video, we had to make sugar cooked to a “hard ball” which is a certain temperature. But the best way to check sugar temp is with fingers. So he is demoing how we should do it. The sugar is boiling so we have to chill our fingers in cold water before, then as fast as possible grab a bit of the cooking sugar with two fingers and put it in the cold water. Then you can see if the sugar gets soft or hard when it’s cold.
Hi Mashav,
We (Savta & I) have stopped receiving e-mails from your blog when you put up a new post… we miss it!
Is it a problem on the site?
The lemon grass looks like “Mellisa” -we use it here in tea.
The sugar testing is the classic way . The temperature is classified as “soft ball” or “hard ball”. it is common in candy making also. I am surprised that you don’t use a candy thermometer, although it looks like you are learning everything first the classical/manual method… like whipping egg whites by hand..baaaa!
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Looks beautiful!!
Good thing that you explained about the water video, I didn’t understand what was he doing as well..