Return of the Puff

First week back, no longer feeling like the babies of the school, it was time to begin Intermediate Patisserie (IP). Monday and Tuesday were spend in demos on more puff pastry recipes. Somehow the dreaded pastry we first tackled way back in week seven didnt seem quite so scary second time round. The first recipe of the term was for a gateau St Honore. This is a fairly technical dish as the recipe includes not only puff pastry, but our good old friend choux, as well as sugar work, creme diplomate and, of course, piping. Charmingly, this cake is named after the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. In demo, the chef finished the cake of with the classic spun sugar decoration and a bit of crystalised lavender.

On Tuesday we covered two more classic puff pastry dishes: pithiviers & mille-feuille. A pithivier is an enclosed puff pastry dish, filled with an almond creme. It is egg washed for shine and marked with a knife for general prettiness. There is an old french tradition (I am told) of baking this with a bean inside, and whoever gets the lucky slice au bean gets to be king for the day. To avoid the consequences of a demanding IP king, ours was baked beanless.

All pithiviers, great and small.

The final dish of demos was the mille-feuille; thin layers of puff pastry sandwiched with jam, cream and strawberries, traditionally finished with a layer of fondant icing with feathered chocolate. Im salvating just writing about it. Again, the chef made both a larger 'cake' and smaller individual sized slices. 

Really rather lovely looking

Moving on to wednesday and our first bake-a-thon of the term. Between the hours of 3 and 9 we were in the kitchen rolling, whisking, piping and slightly sweating to create the dishes above. The first half of the lesson was spend making the puff pastry and the St Honore. I was pleased to find my basic skills hadn't disappeared along with the snow in the winter holidays. Being back in the boulangie was great, although my spec right by the oven wasn't the best of calls. Nonetheless, here is cake #1 minus the spun sugar.

We then had a 15 minute break, during which I ate a pastrami sandwhich in all of three bites and downed half a litre of water. Fed and watered, I was ready for the next two treats. I was a bit apprehensive that the puff pastry might not have had enough time to rest, but everything went according to plan and overall I was pleased.

King for the day

Good enough to eat

I'm not going to lie, after six hours of baking I was well and truly ready for bed and didnt enjoy my mission across London laden with cake tins. Having said that it is definately a better reflection of real working life and it shoundn't be long till I'm hardened up to it. The dilemma of fitting the cakes into the fridge was solved by my hungry housemates who made sure they all slotted onto one plate nicely

In other news, I have a French speaking test tomorrow for evening classes so perhaps I'll be learning the lingo in no time. 

Swanning Around

Yesterday was the last day of our pastry lessons, finishing off the collection nicely with choux pastry. Choux is the stuff used for eclairs, profiteroles and other tasty cream filled delights. And so that is what the chef showed us. In demo we were shown how to make the pastry itself, unlike the others this one is made on the stove to a gloopy consistency and then piped into the various shapes and sizes. Once the pastry is cooked it is filled, normally with large quantities of oh-so-naughty cream and other assorted treats. Here are some examples from chef, take note of the particularly gorgeous swan with a glint in his eye who stole my heart.

True love

In class we had to make the choux swans and the eclairs. This was a particularly daunting class because these are one of our potential exam dishes and this was a first attempt at them. The choux swans need to be piped evenly and their delicate necks need to be just that, any thing fatter and it becomes more of a choux goose. Although in class I found the techniques fine, time for this recipe is tight. There is alot to do and I'm sure those kitchens are in some kind of time warp, an hour easily passes in what feels like 15 minutes. As a result the end of class was a bit stressy as everyone tried to get the finishing touches to their pieces, we had swans to construct, fruit to arange, cream and chocolate to pipe and a sense of elegance to maintain (or at least attempt). In the mad dash to finish a few of my swans ended up with slightly bog eyed or backwards facing, but they were okay. Slightly terrified of having this in the exam though.

Poor backwards swan

For some reason yesterdays class was a bit stressful and on the tube home I was a bit distracted and missed my stop. I was shattered and feeling slightly bitter towards my swans when a strange thing happened. A woman next to me made me open my tupperware to see what was inside and spent the next 2 minutes delighting over my swans. Suffice to say this made my day. However, once her stream of compliments ended she spent the rest of the tube journey singing quite loudly so my ego wasnt too inflated.