Plated Desserts Made Simple #1: Elegant Chocolate Towers

The base of the tower dessert and some of its layers are made of chocolate mousse, which is a very versatile recipe that can be made using any type of chocolate: dark, milk or white. it goes really well with many kinds of fruits, and that gives us lots of options for creating well balanced and fantastic flavor combinations. 

In this lecture you'll learn the secrets to a great mousse recipe, that you can use for many kinds of cakes and desserts. You can also use this mousse to frost cupcakes or simply serve it in a cup with whipped cream or fresh fruits.

Serving the tower with fruit sauces makes a lot of culinary sense, as it creates a sensation of flavors and colors that is truly amazing and delicious. In this lecture Irit introduces the two kinds of fruit sauce you’ll make in this course and explains how we'll use them when we plate and serve the tower desserts.

Fruit sauces are traditionally added to many cakes and desserts, and are a staple in most commercial pastry kitchens. These sauces complement almost any dessert really well, because of their sweet yet tangy flavors and beautiful vibrant colors. In this lecture you’ll learn how to make raspberry and mango sauces, however you can use the techniques you’ll learn to make sauces using any fruit you like using fresh fruits, frozen fruits or fruit purees.

Caramel sauce is a great recipe to have in your repertoire. It is decadent, creamy and overall delicious, and besides using it when serving your towers you can use it for many other purposes. In this lecture you'll get a fantastic recipe and detailed demonstration for making the best caramel sauce, as well as important safety guidelines you should pay attention to when working with hot caramel. 

Ganache is a mixture that's commonly made of chocolate and cream. Based on your needs, it can be made using any type of chocolate: dark, milk, or white. In this lecture Irit walks you through making white chocolate raspberry ganache, which is a uniquely flavored ganache that has a strong vibrant color. The ganache adds interesting colors to the tower’s composition and balances its sweetness with tangy raspberry flavor. Note that you can use this recipe and techniques to create other kinds of ganache, simply by using other fruit purees instead of the raspberry.

Our tower desserts includes many kinds of chocolate elements, which serve as "building blocks" of its layers. Fortunately, this means that you’ll get the opportunity to create various objects using chocolate. Needless to say, chocolate objects are extremely useful in cake decorating, and there are endless ways you can use them to garnish your edible creations. In this lecture you'll get an introduction to making chocolate elements, and learn how to make flat chocolate discs and rings. 

In this lecture you’ll learn the secrets to creating and decorating beautiful and intricate 3D chocolate rings using tempered chocolate (tempering is also covered in this course as bonus material). You’ll discover how to shape and color the rings and how to change their sizes and patterns per your needs. Later we'll and we’ll use these stunning rings to wrap the base of our towers, but obviously they can also serve as great decorations for many other cakes and desserts. 

In this lecture you’ll discover how to create delicate chocolate sticks using tempered chocolate, and how to shape and cut the sticks to any height and size you like. We’ll use these gorgeous yummy sticks to decorate the towers and make them even taller and more impressive. Just like the other chocolate decorations we cover in this course, these sticks can also be used to decorate many other cakes and desserts.

In this lesson we explore really cool techniques you can use to decorate flat chocolate objects such as discs or rings. You'll discover how you can create beautiful and accurate patterns on chocolate in any color you want. You'll also learn how to use free-hand style to draw stunning abstract patterns, which comes handy if you need more flexibility. The skills in this lecture are very valuable. In this project they enable you to decorate the top of your towers in your own way so they can match different themes.

The last chocolate decoration you'll learn how to make in this course is actually a delicious and adorable candy: the chocolate sphere. The spheres make the colors of the tower more vibrant and add an unusual and whimsical dimension to its presentation. In this lecture you'll discover how make the spheres and how to decorate them, as well as many other tips and tricks that will help you to make perfect chocolate spheres consistently.

Modeling chocolate is a pliable paste that is made of chocolate and corn syrup. it’s a fantastic material for decorating cakes and desserts, because it tastes great, really easy to work with and can be easily molded and sculpted into all sorts of shapes and objects. In this lecture you'll explore a quick & easy technique to make modeling chocolate from scratch. This technique gives you great flexibility, since you can determine the precise color and flavor of your modeling chocolate, and make sure they fit the theme and flavors of your cakes and desserts.

In this lesson Irit is going to show you how to create colorful chocolate strips using modeling chocolate, and how to create various patterns on their edges. While plating our towers we’ll use these strips to decorate their bases, however they can also be very useful in many cake decoration projects.

In this lesson you’ll see how you can use the leftover mousse from the tower’s ring to create cute and tasty mousse petit fours. Using simple steps we’ll create petit fours with unique and interesting decorations and flavors.

In this lecture you'll discover how to use all the decorations we’ve made, as well as fruits and candies, to create several stunning presentations for the chocolate mousse tower. We focus here on two raspberry-based designs, and Irit demonstrates how to create the towers layer by layer, and how to plate them in a sophisticated and elegant fashion.

This lecture demonstrates the flexibility of the tower's design, by walking you through the creation and plating of two distinct design variations. One of the alternative designs uses fresh mango instead of raspberries. The other one is really fun and whimsical, and uses yummy chocolate candies and colorful raspberry ganache. As you're going to discover, you can change almost every aspect of these tower desserts very easily. There are virtually endless combinations you can use to create amazing flavors and presentations that fit many occasions. All it takes is some creativity and imagination!

In this lesson Irit shows you how to decorate the serving plates with elegant whipped cream quenelles, and how to serve the towers with warm sauce that complements its taste. The real surprise arrives when the sauce is poured on top of the towers. As you’ll see, this creates a stunning melting effect, which never fails to generate excitement!

In this lesson Irit shows another fun variation for the towers, that is perfect for Valentine's Day or Mother's Day, where you want to create a really special dessert for your loved ones. The presentation of this design is themed around the concept of "Love", and is very special indeed!

In this lesson Irit demonstrates how to create a special version of the tower dessert that she designed especially for Christmas. Snowflakes, colorful chocolate ornaments and large golden chocolate star - these stunning Christmas desserts are going to be the highlight of your festive dinner!

Before she says goodbye Irit takes a moment to review and summarize what you learned and accomplished in this course, which is quite a lot! If you took the time to learn everything and practiced what you learned, you're well on your way to creating incredible culinary masterpieces! Congratulations!

In some people’s mind tempering is only done by professional pastry chefs, however you're about to discover that you can easily temper chocolate at home, even if you don’t have much experience or expensive equipment.  In this lecture you’ll learn a great deal about tempering chocolate: why it's important, when it's best to use it and for which purposes. You'll also explore the two methods you can use for chocolate tempering: either manually or by using a tempering machine. Irit covers the advantages and disadvantages of each method, and explains when it's appropriate to use each of them.

In this lesson you’ll learn a great technique for tempering chocolate manually, which Irit perfected over years of experience working with chocolate. You’ll discover how simple it is to temper chocolate at home even if you don't have any experience. In fact, all you need is a little bit of patience and a chocolate thermometer, which is not expensive and can be easily found in most specialty stores.

Our discussion of tempering wouldn’t be complete without covering the subject of using a machine to temper chocolate. Using a machine has many advantages over manual tempering. In this lesson irit covers the different kinds of machines available to you, and explains how to pick a machine that's right for your needs. You'll also get a demo of running a full tempering cycle using a machine.

Here you can download all course materials for "Elegant Chocolate Mousse Tower Desserts":

1. Class Companion - 31 pages eBook with important info, tips and tricks
2. Project Timeline - a bird's-eye view of the preparation process for the towers
3. Recipe Book - all recipes used in this course
4. Metric Conversion Guides - US/EU metric conversion tables
5. Food Cost Calculator - Raspberry Tower Design
6. Food Cost Calculator - Mango Tower Design
7. Food Cost Calculator - Candy Tower Design
8. Tools & Ingredients - a PDF document that lists most tools and materials used in this course
9. Wave Template - used to create patterns on chocolate
10. BONUS - Chocolate Tempering - Class Companion - eBook with important info, tips and tricks
11. BONUS - Chocolate Tempering - Project Timeline
12. BONUS - Chocolate Tempering - Fahrenheit to Celsius Conversion Table
13. BONUS - Chocolate Tempering - Class Store