Vienna Almonds, Almond Rochers, Chocolate

Chef Gert's Vienna Almonds & Rochers

It's a mighty fine day for redemption, and a hard one to screw up when you're working with only 3 ingredients: almonds, sugar and chocolate.

We made a chocolate-almond confection known as rochers, and 2 kinds of Vienna almonds: a dark, caramelized version and its fairer cousin, White Vienna, I presume?

Sugar Coated Slivers, Lightly Roasted Almonds

We first coat the almond slivers in sugar syrup and dust them with icing sugar. These are then lightly roasted along with the whole, blanched almonds for added color and flavor.

Boiling & Crystallizing Sugar

To make Viennas: bring sugar, water, a whole vanilla bean and the roasted almonds to a boil, until the sugar solution reached 124'C. Then vigorously stir about to agitate the sugars into crystallizing, coating the almonds with a white fairy dust as it happens.

Sifting Out Excess Sugar

 Buttering Up, Cooling Down

Bring the sifted almonds back into the pot and stir in a small dab of butter for shine, before laying them onto a large tray to cool down. There you go: White Vienna.

What Lies Beyond Crystals...Caramel

For the darker version, we took the crystallized almonds a step further, stirring them in the pot until the sugar crystals start to break down and melt. At this stage, the caramel is cooked until it takes on a dark golden hue and an aromatic smoky flavor. This is again spread out on a large tray to cool completely. I mean it folks. 124'C burn in your mouth is no laughing matter.

Coating Slivers With Tampered Chocolate, Spooning Rochers

Ah. rochers, easy-peasy. Tamper chocolate. Add almonds. Stir. Spoon. Set.

 Oui, Tis Moi! Chez Alleez!

Gee Weezz! Note the remarkable similarity, right down to our arched eyebrow!

Practicing Opera

This being a very quick class, we had some time to practice writing Opera for our, you guessed it, Opera gateau, which we will be making on assessment day.

On the left, Chef Gert's neat and classy chocolate piping. On the right, my whimsical scrawls. I quite like mine: order and uniformity has never been my strength.

Beer Buddies

I tampered too much chocolate for my rochers, so raisins and dessicated coconut were thrown into half the mix before moulding. Sure they may look a little rough, but beer food has never been the dainty sort, has it?

Morelle Cherry Soufflé, Raspberry Sorbet, Tulip Paste

Chef's Vacherin, Grand Marnier Soufflé Glacée

Raspberry Sorbet, Morelle Cherry Soufflé

I'd like to think I did my best today, but I couldn't and I didn't: might have been the cold and wet skies, my cold and wet snuffly nose and aching throat, or given the nature of today's deflatable, fast melting desserts, not much available for us to take home, which is usually a key motivational tool.

So when the kitchen freezer decided to break down and melt our ice-creams away, I figured: oh well, no point fighting the heavens, let's just take it real easy today.

Layering Meringue With Ice-Cream & Sorbet, Covering With Cream

For those of you whose day isn't going so bad, here's how to correctly make a Vacherin. Assuming your freezer hasn't decided to rebel, you'd have some beautifully creamy ice-cream and soft sorbet to layer your meringue discs with. Covered with cream and topped with fruits and nuts, and you'll have yourself a bygone era favorite, the Vacherin.

Blanched Pistachios & Tuilip Biscuit For Garnish

 

Oh Cold Hard Beauty

Cooking Soufflé Base, Flavoring With Chocolate & Raspberry

Moving on to the soufflés, the dessert that makes grown chefs cry. But in all honesty, it isn't that tricksy to get right once you have the basics taken care of. 

Start by cooking butter, flour and milk to make a white sauce, then cool the mixture down considerably before gradually adding egg yolks and sugar to form the base. At this point the likes of cocoa powder or fruit puree may be added for color and flavor variation,

Lightening Up With Egg White, Spooning Into Ramekins

Once flavored as desired, softly whipped egg white is folded into the base; air bubbles in the frothy whites is what gives the soufflé its remarkable lift when baked in the oven.

Going, Going, Gone

A soufflé's rise, like our fleeting youth and the American Idol fame, is short-lived; its magnificence passing us by faster than Schumacher in a red hot Ferrari. Hence it's usually served straight from the oven, for the customer to strike his spoon into and deflate with glee. 

 

Ho Ho Ho!

 

Do My Eyebrows Look Bushy To You? 

You may notice I have no Soufflé Glacée to present, for mine never stood a chance in the Fridge. You see, guys, Frozen desserts like the soufflé glacée belong in the Freezer so they can Freeze into Ice-cream. Any twit would've known that, but not me. I didn't know where my head was yesterday. Chef Gert took one look at my souffle "soup" and tipped the sorry mess down the sink, and my heart sank with it.

Deflated Chocolate Soufflé

Saving grace was my baked soufflé, though I'd only started decorating my plate after the soufflé hwas out the oven, by which time it had already lost half its glorious height. Bummer.

Vacherin Catastrophe 

Oh this is disgraceful, my meringue and ice-cream gateau was melting into a sticky, revolting goo while I was searching high and low for pistachios. Couldn't find any so I tossed on some rainbow sprinkles and turned away in shame.

Some days just aren't meant to be, and this is one of them. I think I'm gonna lay my weary head down now and live to fight another day.

Grand Marnier Soufflé Glacée, Raspberry Sorbet, Crème Glacée A La Vanille, Vacherin

 

Special Guest

It's another mise en place lesson today as we prepare some variations of cold desserts: iced souffle, sorbet, ice-cream, and an old classic combination of the three, Vacherin.

I was feeling under the weather today and was tempted to stay in bed sick and miserable, but I'm glad I didn't, for we had Chef Keith covering Chef Michael who was meant to be covering Chef Karen for demo. Confused? Doesn't matter, we got *Blue Eyes*, that's what matters. So I apologize if some of the pictures seem well, a little out of focused from the subject at hand, but I'm entitled to my shameless adoration ever so often, and this is my free pass.

Boiling & Cooling Ice Cream Mix

The beginnings of all ice-creams starts with boiling milk, cream and vanilla to pasteurize the dairies, which is then cooled before an egg yolk and sugar mix is whisked in, to keep the egg from scrambling. The mix is then sieved into another bowl to remove any nasty bits of egg shells or membrane, and to help cool the ice-cream mixture down.

Hastening the cooling process will keep the dangerous dairy-and-egg mixture from basking in the bacteria-happy open for too long, and the sooner we finish, the sooner we eat ice-cream!

Churning On

The brand new, state-of-the-art ice-cream machine is something you'll have to sell your wife and kids to raise money for, as it costs a whopping $40 grand to procure. A hefty investment necessity, if you're into the ice-cream business.

Away we go churning the ice-cream until it freezes into the right consistency, at which time the volume will increase by about 50%, also known as over-run, due to the aeration and formation of ice-crystals in the churning process.

The ice-cream is then pressed out of the machine, into a sanitized and frozen bowl, to be kept in the freezer ready for use, tomorrow.

Piping Meringue For Vacherin, Dusting Shell Meringue With Cocoa Powder

 

Vacherin is the French version of Bombe Alaska: a cold cake made with meringue, ice-cream and sorbet, all covered in a layer of whipped cream. While Bombe Alaska is blanketed in meringue and set ablaze, the Vacherin is served as it is, sometimes with fruits for decoration.

Cooking Souffle Over The Bain Marie, Lining Ramekins With Acetate

 

Pouring Into Moulds

Now this was as close as we got to a complete product today: egg yolk, orange zest and sugar syrup cooked over a bain marie (again to avoid direct heat or we'll be scrambling more eggs than McDonald's on a busy Sunday morning) then cooled, lightened with half-whipped cream and flavored with Grand Marnier, all poured into ramekins to be chilled, alas, for tomorrow.

Chef Keith Showing Us The Saccharometer

I suppose some valuable tidbit of information is warranted, to justify putting up yet more pictures of Chef Keith: 

The saccharometer is device used to measure the amount of sugar in a solution. First constructed by John Richardson in 1784, it consists of a large weighted glass bulb with a thin stem rising from the top with calibrated markings.

The saccharometer is first immersed into a cylinder filled with liquid in question, then the sugar concentration is read from levele where the surface of the liquid crosses the scale. It works by the principle of buoyancy. A solution with a higher sugar content is denser, causing the bulb to float higher. Less sugar results in a lower density and a lower floating bulb.

There, now stop judging me.