"Salad du Printemps"

I've realized that my favorite thing about pretty much all desserts is that they can be done ahead of time, and plated right before serving.  This also makes it so that forethought and planning is MUCH more important.

I'm going to write out all dessert steps and ingredients from this point forward.

As i'm sure you can guess, this means that maaaybe I missed a thing or two here.  You would be correct.  Instead of making 'salad du printemps,' it was more like 'soup de printemps.'  But yummy nonetheless.

First came the "salad" - candied rhubard and fennel.

The peeled rhubarb strings were awesome!  I cooked these in some sugar, while I was cutting up the actual rhubarb.

Then cooked the rhubarb in the string-sugar for a good bit.

Then I did the same with the fennel.  You are supposed to cut the fennel into "sheets," which i'm not sure I accomplished.  It didn't matter in the end, since I just cut them into diamonds (parallelograms).




Next, curly cookies!  After my puff pastry disaster, I looked at the picture.  Glad I did.

Quick cookie batter - creamed butter, sugar, vanilla, and flour.

Not so quick stencil - I made it work though!

Then I made "fingers" using the stencil...

Proceeded by burning my fingers trying to roll them around a wooden spoon.  Ouchies.

Next, fennel oil:

Blanched some fennel and parsley

Which then got pureed into pretty oil.  Which I forgot to serve.  Not that it would have mattered given the last step.

So, if you can see the picture, you might notice that I don't have any mascarpone sorbet.  I made it.  It tasted good.  Except I forgot to freeze the ice cream bowl freezer - major 'doh! moment.  So I served it as a sauce instead.  Which was tasty and all, but way to sweet.  So word of advice: freeze your ice cream!