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Choosing A Dessert

A lot of kitchen desserts nowadays are made up of slices of pie, cake or tart, served on a plate decorated with whipped cream an lone berry or mint leaves. But there’s a lot more to a full dessert. Chefs spend hours thinking about the various elements of their appetizers and entree menus and menus, they should also give attention to desserts.

A dessert must possess the same range and balance of tastes, textures temperature, forms, and colors like any other food item. To accomplish this, dessert presentation benefits from the following five components:

Base: typically crisp or cake-like
Filling: creamy or fresh fruit
Sauce: complements the textures, colors, and tastes of the other ingredients
Textural component: like dry fruit chips
Garnishes: edible as well as functional

Filling and base

The foundation of a plate dessert could be anything from lemon pound cake, almond genoise infused with hazelnut-flavored syrup to a crunchy sugar-cookie base. Consider the base as a food container that holds the main component of the dish like the graham cracker-crusted crust of cheesecake or crisp crust on an apple tart, or the tender and moist biscuits of shortcakes made of strawberries. The base must be delicious but not be overpowering the other ingredients of the dish.

The primary body, or filling for desserts typically includes creamy components like mousse or pastries, ganache, or Bavarian cream. These basic cream bases as well as traditional savory sauces, are able to be flavored and then flavored to create an endless variety of unique fillings or the main ingredient of your dessert. Simple pastry creams similar to bechamel sauce, can be prepared in large quantities to use in a variety different ways to flavor desserts. Lightened with whipped cream, colored by fruit puree, or thinned by other liquids to create sauce. Chocolate ganache with cordials or liquors and mousses made with pureed fruit or nuts can be a tempting option. Remember to consider carefully the flavors.

Fillings could also be based on fruits with ripe, flavorful fruits that are in season. A variety of fruit benefit by “macerating” as well as flavoring them with tiny amounts of sugar and other flavors, like fresh strawberries flavored with vanilla and citrus and lemon zests. Some fruits also benefit from cooking before to being used in desserts. Grill pineapple, poach pears , or sauté apples to provide them with different flavors in terms of colors, textures and flavors. Be aware that the methods of grilling, roasting, poaching,. basically identically for fruit as they are for meats. There’s not much you could perform differently grilling a fruit than you would when grilling an entrée.

Sauces

Dessert box sauces also share a few common elements as do the famous sauces of the world of savory. As we mentioned pastry cream could be the dessert equivalent to bechamel which is a starch-thickened, thickened sauce made composed of eggs and milk. It could also serve as a filling or binder. The creme anglaise could be similar to the dessert hollandaise an emulsion that is thickened by eggs. Although caramel sauce isn’t made thicker by roux like the brown sauce that is savory could be, it has a deep rich and full-bodied flavor when used as a reduction demi-glace , or Jus lie. Beurre blanc sauces are extremely easily sweetened to use in dessert applications and there’s no difference between sweet and savory coulis sauces. Additionally, there are chocolate sauces that could also be described as beurre blanc as an emulsion with fat that has been thickened.

Whatever the base of your sauce you choose, it’s just as simple to add exquisite sauces to desserts as you can in the world of savory. Creme-anglaise may be made with cinnamon sticks, coffee beans sticks, or star anise in similar fashion to how the hollandaise sauce is flavored by tarragon. This makes bearnaise. Caramel sauce can be flavored with cordials. Demi glaces can be made with Madeira. Coulis can be spiced or flavored in the exact way similar to tomato sauces.

When selecting the right dessert sauce, follow the same thinking process when you choose a sauce to use for savory foods. The most important consideration is the impact on flavor. What flavor does the sauce add in the food? The next thing to consider is the texture and color. Sauces must play these important role in the dish and there must be sufficient. A proper serving size of dessert sauces ranges from 1/2 to 12 oz to 1 1/2 ounces. Many times, the chefs “garnish” the plates with three or five tiny drops of sauce, which is less than a teaspoonful, and not enough to change the flavor or texture the food.

Textures and garnishes

A lot of desserts are made up of soft and creamy ingredients. Mousses, ganaches cooked fruits and cake batters are soft. Crispy ingredients will delight the palate by providing a different textures, which could be derived from the foundation of the dessert the dessert itself. It could also be an element of garnishing, for example, thin tuiles that are cut or formed into a beautiful shape or a toasted flavor grain or nut. The elements that are textural must be tasty. Include toasted spices in the batter for tuile or dough to add the right flavor and variety and help it be a better match to the food.

Another option for texture on the dessert table is fruit chips. Slice fruit like pineapples, apples or pears very thin. Sprinkle lightly with flavored simple syrup, then bake on silpats or even parchment in the oven in a lower (250o F) oven until they’re dried and crispy.

Other garnishes are also possible to put on the platter provided they are useful. When you are considering the garnishes you can use, consider “What is my guests to think about this? Are I expecting that they eat this as a part of the meal? Does it make the food taste better or hinder the dish? If the guest didn’t consume the garnish in the course could that affect the taste of the dish?” All too often desserts are decorated with edible but not-essential garnishes. Do you really think that guests will eat the whole mint leaf, edible flower, or sprinkle of sugar or cocoa powder around the edges of the dish? Garnishes must increase the flavor the texture, temperature and taste of a dish , as in addition to its appearance and color.

A garnish that is simply used to color the dish is not really a good idea.