help for plated dessert idea

[chocoera]

hey all

so, i am in need of a way to jazz up some marbled cheesecake brownies....kinda taking a down home treat and making it an uptown kinda dessert

since i'm girly, and it involves chocolate and cheesecake, i thought raspberry, since its pink and fruity and a bit tart, to go with the brownie. question is...i think i need a "crunch" factor, so my mind went to tulle cookies. from there?....i dunno.

thoughts? how to arrange, or plate etc? does anyone have any great recipes for a tulle cookie? maybe a raspberry tulle cookie? maybe a wafer underneath ice cream and then brownie next to it? or piping soft raspberry ice cream into a cigarette type tulle cookie? and then...sauces....bittersweet chocolate sauce? raspberry coulis? both?

or maybe both ideas are completely off...any suggestions or recipes would be great to try out!

thanks for thinkin'! hope this gets your creative juices pumping

oh, ps: no need to consider about multiple plate production, its just for a couple people, so no worries there!

[JAZ]

For a Valentine's Day class a couple of years ago, we did brownie cups filled with a raspberry mousse, which went over well. It didn't have anything crunchy, but you could add a garnish of nuts or a tuile chip.

[chocoera]

For a Valentine's Day class a couple of years ago, we did brownie cups filled with a raspberry mousse, which went over well. It didn't have anything crunchy, but you could add a garnish of nuts or a tuile chip.

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did you bake brownies in a muffin tin? how did you make cups?

also...saw i didn't spell tulle cookies right! duh. its tuile. thanks jaz. (must be one of those days....)

[Lisa Shock]

Nut spikes add height and crunch and can be made several hours in advance.

You could make a shaped chocolate piece and balance the brownie on it, for interest. You can add oil based flavor to chocolate, if you want it to be raspberry.

You can also paint the plate with sauce. You could do a chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, and berry coulis.

[chocoera]

Nut spikes add height and crunch and can be made several hours in advance.

You could make a shaped chocolate piece and balance the brownie on it, for interest. You can add oil based flavor to chocolate, if you want it to be raspberry.

You can also paint the plate with sauce. You could do a chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, and berry coulis.

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don't kill me...but what's a nut spike?

and painting....just doing some brush strokes for texture on the plate?

and a chocolate piece....that's would have to be something substantial to hold the weight of a brownie, yes?

thanks for the cool ideas!

[Lisa Shock]

Nut spikes add height and crunch and can be made several hours in advance.

You could make a shaped chocolate piece and balance the brownie on it, for interest. You can add oil based flavor to chocolate, if you want it to be raspberry.

You can also paint the plate with sauce. You could do a chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, and berry coulis.

←

don't kill me...but what's a nut spike?

and painting....just doing some brush strokes for texture on the plate?

and a chocolate piece....that's would have to be something substantial to hold the weight of a brownie, yes?

thanks for the cool ideas!

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You can see a nut spike in my avatar pic. You make some caramel boiled sugar and pull a toasted nut through it so the nut is coated and the sugar pulls to a long spike. Once you have made the sugar, you can also pull lots of other garnishes like spirals and ribbons.

Generally, what people do with sauce on plates is apply with squirt bottles and maybe manipulate with a tooth pick or skewer. You can get cool bottles with small tips at Sally Beauty Supply. Here's a link showing some simple basics. In school we were taught to look at the whole plate as a work of art and to use the sauce as the background structure. You can do something as simple as making rings of various sauces and drag a skewer through to make a simple flower, or go much further with lines and different sized dots. That said, we were never allowed to just slap a zig-zag down like the culinary people do so often.

The brownie could lean on something that wasn't necessarily huge, like a chocolate spiral made with acetate -if the chocolate piece is attached to the plate first with a dab of chocolate. You can also present a dessert inside a molded chocolate bowl or tulip made with a balloon.

Hope this helps!

[CanadianBakin']

Here's a link to Hazelnut spikes. Had you considered baking them in a mini-cheesecake pan and then inverting them to plate? It makes them a bit bigger than a mini-muffin but a bit smaller than a regular size one.

[JAZ]

For a Valentine's Day class a couple of years ago, we did brownie cups filled with a raspberry mousse, which went over well. It didn't have anything crunchy, but you could add a garnish of nuts or a tuile chip.

←

did you bake brownies in a muffin tin? how did you make cups?

also...saw i didn't spell tulle cookies right! duh. its tuile. thanks jaz. (must be one of those days....)

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We made them in straight-sided silicone molds, but muffin tins would work fine. Just bake as usual, then hollow them out. I used a moist, fudgy brownie recipe, but I'd think any style would work.

[jgm]

Here's an idea that probably isn't what you're looking for, but it might start the wheels turning and morph into something useful.

Years ago I made a dessert that was in, I believe, Bon Appetit. (We're talking c. 1981). The first step was to line a bowl with plastic wrap, then piece together a crust made out of a brownie type cake that was a little thinner than the normal brownie. The crust lined the bowl, and then it was filled with a bittersweet chocolate mousse. The whole thing was refrigerated to set, then unmolded, and a milk chocolate thin ganache was poured over the whole thing. My friends called it "chocolate Vesuvius."

Immediately, what I think of is to take this idea down to the individual-serving size. Not sure where I'd go from there. . .

Jenny

[chocoera]

very cool ideas i'm thinking the brownie should be a main focus, so i probably wouldn't want to completely cover in chocolate...but, i do have my friend's rehearsal dinner party to do in 2 months and that my friend, sounds like a fantastic dessert idea!!!

keep 'em coming...researching the sauce design page as we speak....

[beacheschef]

Hey Erica:

Cut the brownie into a rectangle, then into triangles from there. Plate each half upturned on edge - it gives the dessert an interesting look.

I've got a tuille recipe from culinary school I can send to you - just pm me. You can color some of the batter a raspberry shade and pipe it onto the tuille before baking.

We used to create chocolate disks out of white and dark tempered chocolate - and decorate the plate with them. Spread tempered white chocolate onto acetate and pipe a design on it with a contrasting color (add some oil-based pink to white chocolate or use dark chocolate for this step). Before the chocolate firms up, use a cutter or knife to create individual disks. It sounds like you're doing this dessert for a friend, and this is a way to personalize it for them (initials on the chocoalte piece?)

If you liked the idea of adding caramelized sugar to the plate - I second Lisa and CanadianBakin's idea of spiked nuts. They are easy to do and have that "cool factor". Just don't do them too far in advance if there's ANY humidity in the air.

Mary

[beacheschef]

Here's a recipe for Tulipe Paste from culinary school:

7 oz butter, softened

7 oz confectioners sugar, sifted

7 oz egg whites, room temp.

5.25 oz all purpose flour, sifted

1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Alternate adding egg whites and dry ingredients, scraping bowl after each addition.

Add vanilla and mix until combined.

If you want the cookie to be browned all over, bake at 350 degrees.

If you only want the edges browned, bake at 425 degrees.

Cut a template for the cookie from thin plastic.

Only form 2-3 cookies per sheetpan, so that you can shape them once they're out of the oven.

Spread cookie batter onto sheetpan lined with Silpat or parchment paper. Use an offset spatula to spread batter evenly.

Bake cookies until they're done - only a few minutes - depending on how hot your oven is.

As soon as you can lift a cookie, pick it up and drape it over your form (cup, rolling pin, etc...) You need to form each cookie before they cool off and harden.

If the cookies are too firm to form, put them back in the oven for a few seconds to reheat.

To make the batter chocolate - replace the 5.25 oz. flour with:

4 oz all purpose flour

1.25 oz cocoa powder

Sift these dry ingredients together before using.

If you want, tint a small amount of batter with food coloring and pipe it onto formed cookie before baking.

The first couple of times I make these, I end up messing up at least half of them, before I get my timing down. The cookies firm up pretty quickly - it's a balance between burning your fingers on hot cookies and having them cool off too fast.