chocolate and almond dacquoise with red fruit jelly entremet

I hate pollen! What a pity it is so necessary for the abundance of flowers (and most things green) I am just noticing all about the borough of Kingston.

My idea of a honey creme brulee and raspberry core did not work out too well in my previous entremet so this time I have used a puree of assorted red fruits to make a jelly centre, into which I also embedded raspberry halves. As I discovered after plopping my raspberries into the custard for the creme brulee, raspberries are annoyingly adapt at retaining air bubbles in their hollow little cores and halving them appears the neatest solution to this.

The entremet has an almond flavoured (extra almond essence) dacquoise surround and base, and is topped with creme Chantilly, a heap of raspberries, and a sprinkling of toasted almonds. At LCB, the dacquoise we made was covered by textured chocolate pieces; it seemed a pity to hid its lovely pale green and brown colouring so I haven't here, to pleasing effects. I also decided to try my hand at some chocolate work (sniffle- something I shall be missing out in at LCB) hence the odd tempered chocolate decoration (check it out!). It is surprising how much easier it is to work with dark chocolate than white chocolate, which is what I used initially. Sadly the chocolate piping here is awfully blobby. I feel like I have regressed back into piping incompetence.

Anyway, welcome back my wonderful sis!