2012.03.30

Dessert Workshop — at Lorraine’s

Wednesday night, Mommy took Mimi to the dessert workshop hosted by our next door neighbor, Mrs. Johnson. She holds cooking class at her beautiful kitchen. Usually, the timing doesn’t work because it has a conflict with her gym class. This time, it’s held on Wednesday night — the subject is about DESSERT!! Of course, we will be there.

Mommy came home earlier on Wednesday afternoon. I knew that the workshop usually will run pass 9pm. I want to make sure Mimi finished her homework, ate her dinner, practiced her piano before 7pm. All she had left was to take a quick shower and brush her teeth.

She always loves mommy’s beef noodle soup. Mommy made a new pot of soup the night before so that I didn’t have to spend much time preparing for dinner. Even that is the case, it didn’t sacrifice the taste of the noodle.

The first course we learned was filled meringues. This is mostly made of beaten egg whites. The dish comes especially handy when you have extra egg white from other dishes. Lots of sugar was added into the egg white to add up the flavor. Therefore, the filling should be something like fruit to offset the sweetness.

You will add cream of tartar and vanilla to add up the flavor and the texture.

Lorraine already had a few made up from the oven. The audience was decorating the finished meringues with fruits.

This one was decorated by Mimi.

And you can tell someone is very much into order.

The hardest part is to make that into shape. Because of it’s texture, all the shape formed by the spoon will be preserved in oven through heat.

Mimi was trying to make it into a container shape to hold the fruit.

This is Mimi’s work.

When it is served with fruit and whipped cream, it looks very appetizing

Unfortunately, Mimi couldn’t have anything with kiwi. Therefore, she carefully select that parts that didn’t touch the fruit.

Our second course was banana foster. this is the dessert course that you will flame liqueur to add up the flavor.

First, you will make syrup by mixing butter and brown sugar.

Then you will place peeled banana (firmed, not soft ones) into the skillet.

Once the bananas are cooked soft, you add dark rum and light up the torch. Be careful with the fire. It was exciting to see the demo in front of you.

Once that’s done, it can be served with vanilla ice cream. Yum….

Mommy will replace banana with peaches or apples. Those are more appealing to us than bananas.

It’s also served with walnuts. Adds up additional flavor.

The last course was Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes. I think this one was Mimi’s favorite. This is a very similar recipe with brownies. But the middle part still remains liquidy. If this dish is over-cooked, it will become brownie.

To prevent the stickiness to the container, each ramekin (the container) needs to be coated with butter and dusted with sugar.