The Dessert Bar

The class I'm currently taking in pastry school is called Individual Production Pastries (IPP). We make fancy, little desserts- a LOT of fancy little desserts. And as much as I love a gigantic tiered wedding cake, working on a smaller canvas in this class has been inspiring and it totally renewed my affection for dessert bars. Dessert bars offer a wide variety for guests at a wedding to choose from plus the set-up looks really elegant with the right selection of cake plates and platters. It's the easiest and most cost effective way to please everyone and still have a major wow factor. To give you an example of what I'm talking about, here's a beauty of a dessert bar featured by Southern Wedding Magazine:

A dessert bar can be any number of sweets and treats like homemade marshmallows, mini cakes and pies, donuts, cookies, bars, tarts or cupcakes. The idea is that a guest can walk up to the table, pick up a dessert and eat it off a small plate or in their hand. Smaller desserts work best, but depending on the type of event you could really make anything work. What we made in IPP is definitely more suitable for an upscale affair. In class we worked on one dessert item as a team of four, and then combined it with  four other teams' desserts to create a display at the end of every class. These desserts are from the collective effort of my whole group:

These are layered classical cakes clockwise from left: apricot pistachio opera, milk chocolate hazelnut ganache, pistachio and strawberry frasier, chocolate praline roulade and the traditional opera.

Most of these items are made from a dough called pate a choux (what you make cream puffs out of). From the top down, here's a lot of frecnch: macaron, Paris brest, St. Honore cake, banan, religiuse, solambo, macronade biscuit and eclair.

Mille fuille (Napoleon), chibouste and plum tart, yuzu lemon curd tart, chocolate apple tart and citrus tart:

These are called verrines, and they're just layered desserts you eat with a spoon (super fancy pudding cups?). From the top down: Cherry compote and panna cotta, creamscicle, chocolate peanut butter, rum spice with peaches, and tiramisu.

 I'll be going into more detail about some of my favorites coming up. Stay tuned for more dessert bar ideas!