You eat with your eyes, first.

Ah, dessert... So tasty, so beautiful, so commonly misunderstood... Too often mistaken for a mere a pile of sugar and carbs good for little else but making us overweight...

PHOOEY I SAY!

Dessert is an overlooked art form that bears the responsibility of being the last thing your guests eat before they leave. The serving size must neither be too grand, nor insufficient. It must be carefully selected to compliment the flavor of the food on your palate, and served with eye-popping elegance. The proverbial "icing on the cake" so to speak.

Can you feel the pressure yet?

During Breads class, a fellow student asked me which class I would be taking next. "Plated Desserts with Chef Nick," I said. Her advice to me was, "Don't miss a day."

And she wasn't kidding!

This class moved at a lightning fast clip (perhaps a "blintz" paced clip??) It went even faster than the other courses I've experienced thus far. I suspect this may have had something to do with Chef Nick's noble attempt to squeeze 25 years worth of experience into a 6-week curriculum. It certainly kept my on my toes.

We worked both in teams and solo, sometimes getting confused as to which we were supposed to do and when. We learned how to make custards, tarts, pies, tuile, caramel paste, sorbet, soufflé, petit fours, petit sec (cookies), parfait, mousse, dessert sauces, chocolate garnishes, and ice cream (complete with happy ice cream song and dance...) All to an exquisite end: A beautiful plate of dessert with dynamic shapes, colors, textures, and flavors.

Chef Nick has two very favorite food groups: puff pastry and egg yolks. Working with either of these ingredients is a guaranteed ticket to an entertaining demo!

One day, during a demo on parfait (*made primarily from whipped egg yolks + 248˚F sugar + whipped cream, then frozen), Chef Nick gleefully began putting together the pâté bombe (*egg yolks whipped together with the 248˚F sugar) for the base. He hummed his happy egg yolk tune as the hot sugar and egg yolks whirled together in a frenzy in the mixer.

Upon completion of the pâté bombe, Chef pulled the whisk out of the mixing bowl to show us how whipping the hot sugar in with the egg yolks had stabilized the yolks to create a perfectly whipped, lemony yellow, firm-but-not-dry peak that pointed straight upwards. To further demonstrate their stability, he held the mixing bowl upside down while the yolks held tight against the sides of the bowl, mirroring the peak at the end of the whisk. It was at this moment that Chef Nick became "The Egg Yolk Whisperer."

Cheese Wax Chef Nick poses proudly with a successful pâté bombe.

Each classroom has 3 types of debris receptacles: Compost, Recycling and Garbage.

Compost is for "anything that was once alive." Meaning food scraps, or soiled tree product (cardboard/parchment paper/paper towels.)

Recycling is for aluminum foil, clean cardboard, bottles, cans and hard plastics.

Garbage is for anything else, which basically means soft plastics... Plastic wrap and used pastry bags.

One would think that this would be pretty self-explanatory! Being green is common sense, and a hard and steadfast rule when you have Chef Erin in the kitchen. Heaven help you if she finds garbage in a non-garbage bin. When this happens, the class gets to wrap the butcher block tables in plastic wrap, dump out the bins onto the tables, pick through everything that's inside and sort it into it's appropriate bin. Digging through the nastiness of the day's refuse is a feared chore... You do it once as a class, and no one will ever be lazy about putting their stuff into the correct bin again!

The class has 4 compost bins, 1 recycling bin and 1 garbage bin. Chef Erin will often "hide" the single garbage bin, expecting students to use their common sense to figure out which bin should receive our cake scraps. (Not an unreasonable expectation!)

Chef Erin as the Compost Police, with compost and recycling bins (but no garbage bin!)

Cheese Wax Chef Erin and Chef Nick group photo.

Real Chef Erin and Chef Nick carrying on a Cheese Wax conversation.

(Really wishing I'd gotten a video of this!)

Thanks for stopping by! Our next class is CAKES with Chef Scott and Chef Erin. Since both Chefs already have cheese wax effigies of themselves, I'll put up some photos of our class projects instead;-)