Presenting desserts

I took a class the other day to learn how to present desserts - a lot of the elements were already made (the pannacotta, the opera cake) but we had to put it altogether.

Firstly we made a mango brioche galette (all made by me) topped with some coconut sorbet (pre-prepared):

We made some galettes out of brioche dough, topped it with frangipane and sliced mangoes.  A gel over the top to make it shiny, dots on the plate and a sort of rocher of ice cream!

Secondly, an espresso pannacotta, marsala foam and cinnamon sugar (so it looked like a cappuccino), dried fruit compote and candied orange zest 2 ways:

The trickiest thing on this plate was the biscotti.  Biscotti is a really tricky thing to cut.  It's simple enough to make, just like a dry biscuit dough and then you roll it into a log and bake it once.  Then when it's almost baked through you have to cut it into slices and bake it again.  It's the cutting thats hard - I barely got 2decent biscuits out of a roll that should have given me at least 8.

Third, and definitely more complicated, a strawberry vacherin.

So that's sliced strawberry and micro basil in strawberry soup, then floating in that there is a meringue, some strawberry and guava sorbet, a snow egg, persian fairy floss and a sugared rose petal.

The snow egg was so much fun to make!  You need to start with a swiss meringue and then poaching them is easy in salted water.

Then it was time for Chocolate Allsorts:

That's sago sushi, a mint chocolate mousse filled tuille sitting on chocolate dirt, a cherry jammy dodger, opera cake, passionfruit jelly with chocolate peanut truffle, rhubarb sauce, glass biscuit, white chocolate granita and a red star fruit!