Frozen Desserts and Food Network

Today we continued our work on frozen desserts. We churned the rest of our ice creams (chesnut was good!) and also made sorbets and granitas. While our ice creams were churning, we made flexible cookies called tuilles (nut-based batter that spreads on the pan) and tulipes (batter that you shape using forms). The last thing we did today was try plating a dessert. In the photo, the butterfly cookie is a tulipe (scraped chocolate batter into a mold and then outlined with vanilla batter) and the "bowl" that the ice cream is sitting in is called a tuille. After class, Gabriela and I took the trains to the way Upper East Side ("Park Avenue") to volunteer our services at a taping of the Food Networks "Secret Life Of..." with George Duran (used to be on Ham on the Street). It was very cool to see how the show is taped. We got to prepare some of the foods that were being featured - the show is on Food Superstitions and the meal was a special New Year's meal. We had lots of fun and are making some VERY GOOD connections in the industry. Todd is in Seattle, and I'm spending tonight studying, practicing my apple slicing, chocolate writing and souffles (all on my practical exam next week) and focused on getting to bed early. 5 am comes fast!