Plating Guidelines

The same principle is used in plating dessert presentations. A plated dessert is an arrangement of one or more components. For most desserts, all the components are prepared well in advance. The plated dessert itself, however, is assembled at the last minute. All the components discussed throughout this book, including meringues, mousses, ice creams and sorbets, cookies, puff pastry, sponge and other cake layers, pastry cream, and dessert sauces, are used to make a presentation that is more than the sum of its parts. Of course, this means that in order to make successful plated desserts, you first have to learn how to prepare the components.