Spring Luncheon

Last week we had the opportunity to cater a luncheon for a local book club in Salt Lake. The event was held at a beautiful home near the University of Utah, and the weather cooperated enough to hold the event outside.

We served fresh handmade rolls, a berry-mango salad with chicken, warm corn chowder and our unique double chocolate charlottes.

"You made this?"

As the ladies were arriving they gawked at all the food- especially the charlottes. Some were surprised to learn that we handmade every bit of their food: from fresh rolls that were made that morning in our kitchen (not bought from a store!), to the small butterfly tuiles that garnished the dessert. It was fun to tell these ladies that we don't cut corners on the preparation of our food. We like to serve the very best!

I love everything about this dessert: the patterned cake, the white chocolate ganache, and the butterfly tuile! Beautiful!

We sure had a wonderful time catering your luncheon!

Charlottes- a work of art

It seems that in the culinary world there is an (un)spoken competition to make the latest and greatest tasty mouthful. Our Charlottes are something we're very proud of.

Take a small glimpse into the making of these impressive desserts:

First, you start with a stencil. With a silpat mat underneath, a layer of pastry decorating paste is spread over the stencil. The stencil is removed, and the pattern stays on the silpat mat.

After freezing the stencil, we made one Jaconde Sponge recipe, which is a thin cake with almond flour. The batter gets spread over the colored pattern and baked for a couple of minutes. After cooling, we turned over the pan and out comes the Jaconde Sponge with a bright pattern.

We have several different stencils and color possibilities so each dessert can be unique

We then trimed the edges of the cake, and measured out strips for our ring molds.

Here we have our cake cut to the right size for our molds.

Before putting in the cake, a very important step is to line the ring molds with acetate strips. This makes it come out of the mold much easier.

We line the molds with the patterened cake. It's an involved process that takes a lot of fine tuning.

After the rings are lined with our patterened cake, we start to fill it up. This Charlotte was a multi-layered cake: we put in our milk chocolate layer first, put it in the freezer to harden, and repeated the process with the white chocolate layer.

After the second layer hardened, we put on a shiny dark chocolate ganache, let it harden, then took the molds off, garnished the top and Voila! a beautiful Charlotte is born.

Fine French Financiers

 I love our French Financiers. It's a winning combination of fruity flavor, sweet icing, and moist pound cake. One of the great things about it is that you can pair any fruit flavor with it: guava, raspberry, blood orange, grapefruit, etc.

These pictures feature passion fruit, blackberry and raspberry French Financiers.

 

What flavor would you pick?

Thanks to Bekah Loss Photography for the amazing pictures

Chocolate Creme Brulee

Chocolate Creme Brulee is an all-around great dessert. It's familiar, chocolatey, and tasty. At events we brulee the top just before serving because we believe in serving only the freshest food.

Creme brulee is a cooked custard with a layer of caramel on top. Usually, the caramel is formed by sprinkling sugar on top of the custard and then caramelized under a blow torch, which is what we did here.

 

 Double teaming the creme brulee. First you caramelize the tops with a blow torch and then Chef Lou is following behind putting on a dollop of whipped cream.

 For this event, the bride and groom met in a music class so for our garnish we had a chocolate music transfer, and then a fresh raspberry for color

 The guests loved the creme brulee and we had to constantly restock the buffet

Our creme brulee comes in original or chocolate and in bigger sizes for dinners. Add this crowd-pleaser to your event, and it will be a hit!

This comfort food ain't bland

Our cooking class this week was all about comfort food. These recipes were quite straightforward and full of flavor.

Our first flavorful fare was a handmade Caesar dressing. This recipe is very easy: add all ingredients, blend and serve.

Fact of the day: all Caesar dressings include anchovies and ours was no exception!

 

Remember to SLOWLY drizzle in the oil for your dressing so it can emulsify correctly. This is important so the oil and water molecules can actually stick together. 

We then started on Chef Lou's newest creation, the Raspberry White Chocolate Bombe. This is a very simple recipe and can be kept in the freezer up to 2 weeks! Perfect if you're hosting a party.

We first had to reduce the raspberry gelatin

 

 Then we melted our white chocolate chips. It had a beautiful pink color

 

 We then folded in real whipped cream. Don't use fakey cool whip when the better tasting stuff is very easy to make.

We then put the mousse in the mold and let it sit in the freezer.

Once set, you can then frost the cake in whipped cream, press in the white chocolate shavings, garnish and enjoy!

 

Next, we started on the garlicky tri tip. Our meat has been marinating for 4 days in the fridge. We sprinkled it with salt...

 ...then put on our topping, roasted it in the oven...

 ...and topped it with sage whipped cream!

Next in line was the Gouda Cheese and Apple Soup- a Savory original!

 

After softening the apples we added the other ingredients, and while it was simmering we made parmesan crisps.

After sprinkling the parmesan in the molds we added black sesame seeds and toasted in the oven. We toasted our a little too much...

We then served the soup with the parmesan crisp garnish!

Our last recipe was another dessert: a Triple Chocolate Bavarian.

This has layers of brownies, milk chocolate, and white chocolate. 

 

We used two methods for garnishing. 1) before taking it out of the mold we drizzled a chocolate ganache on top. After that hardened we took it out of the mold. It has nice clean lines.

 

 

The other method is 2) take the Bavarian out of the mold and drizzle the ganache over and let it drip down the sides.

It's so delicious you can't wait to take a bite of it!

 

This class was especially delicious. Even though these are simple recipes, don't take shortcuts because you'll cut down on the quality and taste of the meal.

Everything you've seen demonstrated in these classes can be ordered for your next catered party! Call us today and we'll help make your party a success.

This was our last class for a while. If you're interested in taking a class, drop us a line and hopefully we can fit in some classes soon. Thanks to all those who came and we hope to see all of you- and even some new faces- next time!