This is a wonderful plated dessert and the first true, professional style plated dessert I have done for the blog. Why? Because it takes time to learn and basic skills need to be developed before attempting such a dessert. Plus, this basic plated dessert has seven components – seven! Yes, I realize thats quite a few but I will explain how make each one and provide a schedule to make a dessert like this.
The Recipe
The individual components for this dessert are:
finely chopped cashews
fresh berries
Some of the components take no time at all – fresh berries simply need to be cleaned and strawberry coulis takes 10 minutes to make and keeps in the refrigerator for several days. Other components, such as the chocolate cake and the cremeaux will take a bit more time.
This is how I managed the work to create this dessert.
Day 1 Â Â Design the dessert and shop for ingredients if necessary.
Day 2 Â Â Make the chocolate cakes, the cremeaux, and the coulis.
Day 3 Â Â Make the cashew micro sponge and the meringues.
Day 4 Â Â Plate the dessert! Take plenty of pictures!
Assembly
First, put the sauce and the major component (cake) on the plate. Add the quenelle of cremeux.
Place the sponge cake pieces next and then the berries and meringues. Finally, fill in with the chopped nuts.
Make sure that you have a well balanced plate by looking at it from all angles.
Alternatives
Changes are easy to make in a dessert like this. Allergic to nuts? Leave them out of the cake and off the plate. Substitute shaved chocolate or a chocolate crumble on the plate instead. Don’t particularly care for strawberries? Use raspberries or cherries instead. Too much dark chocolate for your taste? Make a cremeux in a different variety of chocolate or a different flavor altogether.
