Whisk Wednesdays—Bavarois à la Vanille, Coulis de Framboise (Vanilla Bavarian Cream with Raspberry Coulis)

This is the best dessert in my Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link) cookbook so far! If you love ice cream, whipped cream and the texture of pudding, then this Vanilla Bavarian Cream dessert is for you.

The recipe combines techniques learned earlier in this curriculum. Crème anglaise, the base of ice cream, is also the foundation of this dessert. What gives it structure is gelatin. The gelatin is dissolved in water and later stirred into the cooled crème anglaise mixture that has been lightened with whipped cream. After the gelatin does a bit of its magic and sets the mixture slightly, it's poured into molds and chilled.

The raspberry coulis is just puréed raspberries that have been strained to remove the seeds and stirred with sugar and lemon juice. This sauce is drizzled on the Bavarian cream.

The hardest part about this dessert is getting it out of its mold. {Luckily, I only needed one for a photo! The rest we enjoyed eating out of the plastic, golden containers circa-1950s!}

Recipe: Bavarois à la Vanille, Coulis de Framboise (Vanilla Bavarian Cream with Raspberry Coulis)

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

¼ ounce powdered gelatin (about 1 tablespoon)

2 tablespoons cold water

For the Crème Anglaise:

1 cup milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 egg yolks

½ cup sugar

1¾ cups heavy cream

For the Raspberry Coulis:

1½ cups raspberries

½ cup confectioner’s sugar

Juice of ½ lemon, strained

You can find the recipe for Bavarois à la Vanille, Coulis de Framboise (Vanilla Bavarian Cream with Raspberry Coulis) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link). To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
If there's a spectrum, Bavarian cream sits between a mousse and a crème brulée. Its smooth and creamy texture carries the slightly tart raspberry coulis expertly on your taste buds. This is a stunning chilled dessert for summer that you will want to lick clean when no one's looking.

"The orangey sugar cubes at last mooshed, I proceeded to zest and squeeze oranges, soften gelatin, separate eggs — doing it just the way Meryl Streep does in The Hours, by gently juggling them back and forth in my hands, letting the white slip through my fingers into a bowl waiting below. Felt like the way Julia would do it — very cook-y."
— Julie Powell in Julie & Julia, page 108

Links
• Khalyapina Kitchen: Orange Bavarois Recipe
• What's for Lunch, Honey?: Strawberry Bavarian Cream

Next Class
• Velouté Du Barry (Cream of Cauliflower Soup) pages 419-420

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Running total: $1,434.41 + $11.01 = $1,445.42
($1.84 per serving)

Butter used so far: 12 pounds, 20.5 tablespoons

87% complete

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