41st Recipe: A Moment of Zen

Well friends…this is it! The dessert on the cover of the book, that ultimately lured me into this journey ! My final recipe. It seems so sad. But truthfully, I intend to pick 12 recipes that I can change by making them lighter, easier, and appropriate for Christmas. So let’s get back to the business at hand. This is what the dessert should look like…..

Obviously this one needed a very specialized mold. What the picture doesn’t show, is that there is a tart shell supporting all this fruit and of course the Zen paisley. The tart shell is filled with a cherry flavored liquor pastry cream, with a layer of Blackberry coulis, topped by more of the pastry cream. The paisley mold was filled with Raspberry mousse, and covered with a Raspberry glaze. then the other “side” is filled by fruit of all kinds and edible flowers. Here’s mine……

Not as smooth as the original. What you also don’t see in the pics, is that the paisley is about 2 to 2 1/2 inches high. So getting all that fruit to pile up and stay is a challenge in itself ! Also hard to cut and serve. A whole segment of tasters won’t even get a slice of Raspberry mousse… just a pile of fruit on a thin tart. Very tricky. I feel as though I can honestly say I pretty much rose to the challenges of this recipe book…..and had a lot of fun doing it. Thank you to all that have read these posts and supported my efforts! I hope you come back and check out my Christmas Alterations !