Next thing you know...an entrement!
The idea was to use a few more of the pomegranates that were gifted to me, and to re-test my pomegranate bavarois recipe. But then I remembered the entrement mold that I had never used. Then I wondered if I could insert fillo dough and keep it crisp. And on and on it went.
Then as luck would have it, a reason! A dear friend had her 85th birthday (it was actually a month ago, but I didn't realize that, so this was her 2nd birthday this year). We had a dessert. We had a birthday. Clearly it was meant to be!
And on I went. The sponge was done...no blueberry bleeds SUCCESS! The whole wheat fillo was baked after being brushed with ginger kumquat syrup and it maintained its shape SUCCESS! The pistachios were perfectly chopped and toasted SUCCESS! It was beginning to feel like a slot machine...CHERRY! CHERRY!...and you just hope for that third cherry.
I let the dust settle and worked on some decorations. First I played with powdered chocolate colors that were sitting unused...next thing you know I had a pretty fun looking pomegranate half. While I have that syrup, let's candy the kumquat...the lil buggers collapsed on me, but still turned out okay. Why not boil that sugar down...I did, and did a little spun sugar which was ugly, so I started pulling on the sugar and got great color and striping. Then in the back of my head I remembered all of the people who said my recent pistachio pomegranate cake was "too busy."
Okay, let's take a deep breath here. I don't really need to use everything. Let's make more and only use some of it. I made some chocolate side rails to wrap the whole thing...that didn't work quite as well as I would like. Fine, let's spray paint the whole thing with kumquat colored cocoa butter. I love using my house painter in the kitchen. Then lunch hit, then customers, then daily duties. And finally the birthday dinner was an hour away. I gave up on the side rails and settled for some piped ganache. Not fancy, but effective.
But how did it taste? Really nice. A good melding of flavors. An outstanding mix of textures. It was good. The birthday girl was very, very happy, and promised another birthday next month if I needed a reason to make another dessert.
I'm dubbing this the best thing I've ever made. I don't really keep track of these things, but this really did turn out well, and couldn't have been for a better reason.
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8 comments:
Very well done! I especially love the fauxmegranate :) I thought for a while there that you were trying to build a "signature" dessert for the cafe!
Nice cake! i like all the layers.
Thanks. I wish I had Manggy's photography to do it justice.
Cool Rob! When I read the description the first thought I had was "wow, that's a lot of different flavors in one bite" but you proclaimed it your best yet and you've done a lot of really nice things so of course it has to be good. I'm always a fan of the chocolate spray and that pomegranate is awesome. A shame the wrap you had planned didn't work out, I can't entirely picture in my head what it was going to look like from the description on egullet. I feel like a complete slacker, I haven't been doing any experimenting at all lately. The holidays moving in have kept me exrememly busy but I think maybe that's just an excuse.
Holidays are good, but not that good. But, I keep picking up caters. The wrap...visualize a Moroccan motif transfer paper with a light red ink. I wanted the base of the mold to be completely wrapped by a 1/2" strip of dark chocolate with that transfer design. It would have gone about 2/3 of the way up the sides. If you notice, the whole thing is sent on a chocolate disk that is the same shape as the entrement, but it sticks out 1/8"...just enough to hold the wrap which didn't happen. I think it could have been a nice effect, but only if it was tightly wrapping and not warping. I've never had a good wrap, so definitely something I need to play with.
Yeah, that wrap would have looked nice on it but I don't think it suffers from not having it. Apparently the current workload has my brain not functioning properly as well as being an excuse to be lazy, where the hell did I get "exrememly"?
Well that is some cake! Very impressive and unique! I can see why you are proud. Bravo!
Having been one of only three people to have the honor of eating this that night, I concur it was probably the best thing Rob's ever made. Our friend called it, "the best dessert I've ever eaten" (and remember, she's 85, and well-traveled).
The most amazing part was the crisp filo in the center. But, really, all the flavors and textures worked perfectly together, each holding its own without fighting with each other. A real success.
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