28.4 Plating desserts and garnishes

Who orders dessert

Guests love dessert, but in most restaurants half of them at most will order one. Many are too full for a large dessert but would like something small and sweet, or something to share. So offer lighter, simpler choices as well. A cheese platter or a savory dessert are popular options too.

Made ahead, put together at the last minute

Pastry work has two stages. First the cook makes the parts, such as doughs, batters, fillings, creams and sauces. Then those parts are put together into finished desserts. A plated dessert is one or more parts arranged on a plate. The parts (mousses, meringues, ice creams, sorbets, cookies, cake layers, pastry cream and sauces) are almost always made well ahead, but the plate itself is put together à la minute: just before it goes out.

Five things to plan

Plan a plated dessert around five things. Three concern taste and feel in the mouth, and they matter most: flavor, texture and temperature. Two are visual: color and shape.

• Flavor: flavors should support each other, like caramel sauce with roasted fruit, or contrast pleasantly, like tart lemon with a sweet sauce. Taste each part alone, then together, to be sure they work.
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• Texture: a soft main item, like a mousse or ice cream, wants something crisp beside it, like small cookies or caramelized nuts.
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• Temperature: hot and cold together please the diner, such as ice cream on a warm fruit tart.
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• Color and shape: variety looks good, but too much looks like a jumble. Keep it simple and trust the food. Brown works well: a well-made dessert in a few shades of brown can look lovely, and a tarte tatin with properly caramelized apples needs little or no garnish.

Some general rules hold behind every new idea.

• Vary textures and tastes to avoid sameness.
• Contrast matters as much as harmony, but avoid extremes.
• Foods from the same season or the same place usually go together.
• Fresh and ripe always wins.

From idea to plate

A dessert goes from idea to plate in three steps.

• Picture it. Start from what you have or can get now, what has worked or failed before, your memory of how things taste and smell, and whatever catches your eye, nose or hand in a raw ingredient.
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• Set the flavor profile. Once the main idea is fixed, decide how the basic tastes will balance. see chapter 6: Describing flavor: the flavor profile
• Bring in the other senses. Temperature, real or felt (mint feels cool, spice feels hot); a wide range of color; shapes that catch the eye; some of each texture; mouthfeel, whether dry, fatty or rich; smells that do not overpower; and sound, since noisy, awkward food can spoil the mood.
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Try new things, but never too much of anything. The best dishes reach several senses. Look to classic pairings and carry them somewhere new: flavors that work together in one dish will work in another, which is why savory pantry items now turn up in desserts.

Does it need a garnish?

What a garnish can do

A garnish may be only decoration, but a well-chosen one does more: it can add flavor and texture and solve a practical problem.

Ice cream or sorbet starts to melt the moment it touches a plate, which spoils the look. Set the scoop on something, such as a cookie base, and it melts more slowly, so it is easier to serve and the guest sees the plate as it was meant. These all work as a base for a frozen part:

• tuiles, which also add looks, flavor and crunch
• sliced fruit
• a meringue disk
• a small cookie
• a chocolate garnish
• crumbs of cake, crushed nuts or brittle

Kinds of garnish

How sugar, chocolate and eggs behave under heat is explained earlier in the book. see chapter 7: What heat does to food see chapter 15: What eggs do in a recipe

• Tuiles: thin cookies. Spread the batter through a stencil onto a silicone sheet, comb it, pipe it, or spread it on a textured mat, then shape it while still warm.
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• Hard meringues: use 1.5 to 2 parts sugar to 1 part egg white, by the common or the Swiss method. Dry them in a low oven for 12 to 36 hours. Pipe them as sticks, disks, or baskets like those of the classic French dessert vacherin.
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• Pulled and blown sugar: cook a syrup to 155 to 160°C (310 to 320°F), cool and color it, then fold and stretch it into ribbons or bows. For blown sugar, a pump inflates the slightly cooled sugar like a balloon, to make shapes such as fruit.
• Bubble sugar: pour liquid sugar at 150°C (310°F) onto a special paper, then tilt the paper so it runs and bubbles.
• Caramel: cook a syrup to 165 to 185°C (330 to 365°F), darker the longer it goes. When it has cooled enough, spin it, pipe shapes or sticks, drizzle it onto an upturned bowl to form a caramel cup, or dip nuts and pull them out to form spikes.
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• Isomalt: a special sugar that reaches caramel heat without coloring and takes up less moisture, so it lasts better in humid air. Pull or blow it like sugar, or sprinkle it between two silicone sheets and bake 12 to 15 minutes in a 175°C (350°F) oven, dusted first with powdered color if you like.
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• Chocolate: keep it delicate, since a thick piece overwhelms the dessert, and always temper it, for snap and shine. Spread a thin layer on marble and shape it as it sets into curls, fans or cigarettes. It can also be piped, poured with nuts as bark, or mixed with cream and made into chocolate "caviar" by spherification.
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• Marzipan and rolled fondant: roll and cut into shapes and figures, or use as a base.
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• Filo: butter and layer it, scattering nuts, seeds, cocoa, herbs or spices between the sheets, then cut it into shapes or cups and bake.
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• Kataifi: a filo cut in thin strands, from Middle Eastern cooking. Brush with butter, tie into knots or baskets, and bake.
• Bric: sheets from Middle Eastern cooking. Wet them with a brush, sprinkle on cinnamon sugar, bake, and cut into shapes.
• Puff pastry: a crisp base, or cut and twisted into straws and allumettes (thin sticks).
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• Choux paste: pipe or comb it into long strands and scatter seeds or nuts over before baking.
• Cheese crisps: scatter grated hard cheese on a baking sheet and bake at 175°C (350°F) for about 5 to 10 minutes until crisp, then break into shards once cool.
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• Fruit: fresh, or dried into leather or powder. Slice firm fruit thinly, dip it briefly in sugar syrup with lemon juice, and dry it on a silicone sheet in a 95°C (200°F) oven for several hours, or in a dehydrator.
• Candied zest: poach citrus peel in sugar syrup, cool, and roll in fine sugar.
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• Candied nuts and brittle: cook syrup to the hard crack stage, 148 to 155°C (310 to 330°F). Stir in toasted nuts, lift them out, drain and cool. Chopped nuts cooked in the syrup make a brittle, to break up or grind to powder.
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• Rice noodles: deep-fry briefly and toss in cinnamon sugar.
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• Cookies: sugar cookies, shortbread, or cookies of sweet dough (pâte sucrée) or tart dough.
• Sponges: genoise, angel food, japonaise, joconde or baumkuchen, sliced thin and cut into shapes.
• "Caviar": small spheres made by reverse spherification.
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Sauces on the dessert plate

A dessert sauce adds both flavor and looks, just as a savory sauce does for meat, fish or vegetables. The most useful are the fruit sauces and coulis, chocolate and caramel sauces, and crème anglaise; one of these suits almost any dessert.

• Caramel sauce: bitterness grows as the sugar darkens, so cook it lighter or darker to suit the dessert. Liquid added at the end stops the cooking, softens the sauce and can add richness: cream, milk or butter for richness, water for a clear sauce, fruit puree for another flavor.
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• Chocolate sauce, or fudge sauce: cream or milk, butter and chocolate, served hot or cold. The balance of the three sets the thickness.
• Compote (French for "mixture"): fruit cooked in, and served with, its own liquid, usually a sugar syrup.
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• Coulis (French for "strained liquid"): usually an uncooked, strained puree, bright and pure in flavor. It can separate quickly on the plate, so use it à la minute.
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• Crème anglaise ("English custard"): eggs, sugar and milk or cream, stirred over heat until it thickens lightly. Too much heat scrambles it; keep it at or below 85°C (185°F). see chapter 7: Eggs
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• Curd: a creamy fruit sauce or spread, most often citrus or berry, made from juice, eggs, butter and sugar, cooked much like crème anglaise.
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