Promised Photos

Greetings from sugar land!  Suzie, a p.m. pastry cook, is the only one of us who remembered to take photos of my new desserts, and she sent them to me last night!  To the left is the Strawberries & Toast:  toasted pound cake, browned butter buttercream, fresh strawberry jam and an orange-ice milk float.  It's supposed to be a play on breakfast, hence the float of orange juice and milk.

 To the right is Coconut Cake, which is what it is, a very sweet, sticky southern thing, served with lime cream and coconut-lime "glass," two kinds of sugar that are boiled to hard crack stage, cooled, ground up with coconut and lime zest, then remelted to resemble glass.  Kinda like a lollipop!

 One of my favorites is the Peanut Butter Pie.  Remember our adventures in the Larder with thousands of jars of peanut butter?  I had to use some in a dessert; it's just that yummy. This is the version that will be in the upcoming cookbook, but in individual portion here, topped with peanut brittle.

 This is the one I'd order if I was eating at the hotel:  Mocha.  It's a play on a French classic, L'Opera, which is cake layered with coffee syrup, chocolate cream and coffee buttercream, then topped with slightly crunchy chocolate glaze.  We serve it with cream from a syphon bottle and topped with these lovely little candied crunchy bits we buy.  They're caramelized nuts, ground up and dipped in hard chocolate, very addictive.

And this is Chocolate Mousse, served with coriander whipped cream and caramelized rice krispies.  I ripped this dessert right out of Pierre Herme's Chocolate Desserts book, because it's so lovely, simple and delicious.  Apparently, blogger thinks it looks better sideways.
  There are ten more desserts, but not all the pictures would download politely.  As they downloaded one by one, I noticed that every single one is BROWN.  Now, I've been heard telling people who insist on putting unrelated garnishes on desserts for "color" that brown is indeed a color, but seeing them all together makes me long for spring, when there are a lot of other colors!  Oh, there is the red in the strawberries, but I confess that those are Florida strawberries, and early ones at that.  In two months, South Carolina strawberries will start creeping in, and they'll be lovely, sweet, deep red throughout...   Ah, spring!