Chocolate Banana Nut Dessert

Here is a plated dessert featuring more components I was trying out for upcoming competitions. I must use dark and white chocolate, at least one fruit, and at least one nut. The plate must also feature a sauce and a garnish. Here are the components:

• Dark Chocolate Cake Base
• Brown Butter Dark Chocolate Pave
• Raspberry Banana White Chocolate Ganache
• Peanut Tuile Spiral and Cup
• Banana with Nougatine
• Dark Chocolate Peanut Truffle
• Cinnamon Banana White Chocolate Emulsion

Nutty Chick Cookies

Yesterday I found a cute idea online for making little chicks out of macaroon cookies using nuts for the feet and beak and feathers. I happened to be making nutty tuile cookies yesterday, so I decided to try to form some of them into little chicks since Easter is just around the corner.

Well, they don't look as good as the macaroon version, but they have their own kind of charm to them. While the tuile cookies were still hot, I balled them up and allowed them to cool. I also left some of the cookies just flat. I used melted chocolate to attach a cashew halve to the bottom of the chicks for feet, and an almond for a beak, and colored candy coated chocolates for the eyes, and a piece of flat tuile for the top feathers.
The tuile recipe I used is the same one I used for the tuile cups for my pear ginger sorbet the other week, except I used a mixture of nuts instead of just hazelnuts this time.

Nutty Lacy Tuile Cookies

Nutty Lacy Tuile Cookies
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup golden corn syrup
1 cup ground hazelnuts or almonds, or nut of choice (nut flour)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose (plain) flour

In a medium saucepan, melt together the butter, sugar, and corn syrup. Stir in nuts and flour.
At this point, the batter may be used right away or stored in the refrigerator for later.
To make tuiles: spoon batter onto silicone-line dbaking sheets. I used about 1/4 teaspoon for each tuile, but you may use more for bigger tuile. Space them far apart, I recommend doing no more than six per baking sheet, as they will harden before you can form them anyway.

Bake at 400°F for 5-10 minutes until the edges are browned and center is golden. They need to set for a minute or two on the cookie sheet after coming out of the oven and will color slightly more, so do not overbake them. They are really easy to overbake, and be sure to use a convection oven so they bake evenly. If they are underbaked, they will fall apart.

To form the tuiles, you can drape the warm cookies, carefully removing them from the cookie sheet with a flat metal spatula, over ladles, a rolling pin, or roll them into a cigar shape, as you desire. I used a two ounce ladle to form cups to hold my sorbet balls from the other day.