The finishing touches

Yesterday we had our demonstration and practicals to finish off our creme deserts. In demo we were shown some decorations means and methods such as shaping out tuilles, sugar spinning and piping sauces and choclate using fine paper cone bags. We also had our first fire drill, which happened convieniently whilst I was mid- wee. We filed out like good boys and girls, had our register, and then went back in to see the chef complete her plates and tuck into a mid morning creme brulee.

Poppyseed tuille

Obligatory sugar swan

Spun sugar candy floss

Seven hours and a quick trip to the cinema later we began our wild friday night of shaping, piping and presenting. This is the first time we have had a proper dish to present to the chef to be marked and the only instruction was that our designs must include a tuille. Other than that we had fruit, sugar, chocolate and sauces to play with. At the end of class we took it in turns to present our plates to the chef and get our feedback. And now, here they are for you to pass judgement on:

And the feedback? Okay, here we go:

Creme Caramel: "Good colour, nice custard, well cooked" 

Presentation: "Very good, good use of 2 colours and height. Good idea. Need to work on chocolate piping to be finer and smoother" and, I promise, "with work, almost a perfect dish"

Creme Brulee: "Good amount in dish, good glaze, could possibly go a shade darker"

Presentation: "Needs more height. Should make better use of tuille to give height"

Overall, I was pretty pleased. Really need to work on my general neatness and piping, but that was always going to be the case. Excluding the strange anomaly of an A in GCSE art, my creativity is generally blemished by my clumsy disposition. Piping, I have been told, is the crucial difference between a good and a great pastry chef. So, a weekend of piping a plenty. 

On the plus side, the desserts definately looked good enough to eat and really were delicious. 

Stirred and Baked

Here begins our two part journey into the world of protein thickened custards both stirred and baked. On the 'stirred' agenda was your classic pour-on-apple-pie style custard (creme Anglaise) and representing the 'baked' were creme caramel, creme brulee and the big daddy of the custard world: pot au creme (pot of creme). This lesson has been split into two parts because the baked custards need to sit in the fridge for a good few hours (and preferably overnight) before they can be finished. To add to this, we were also being taught to make coulis and tuille biscuits to decorate our finished products tomorrow.

So, we spent our practical lesson time today cooking the creme Anglaise, caramel, brulee, coulis and a batter for the biscuits and tomorrow we get to do all the fun finishing touches (e.g. blowtorching our brulees). After spending a couple of hours cooking up these treats they were labelled, wrapped and put in the fridge. Painful as it was to to come home empty handed, the thought of tucking into them tomorrow is already making me drool slightly.

To add to this we even recieved what I am going to take as a compliment from the teaching chef. By which I mean he looked at the consistency of our creme anglaise and said "good". Perhaps not much to boast about, but a few other custards in the class had taken the unfortunate turn towards scrambled eggs. How our other custards will turn out tomorrow is yet to be seen. But, for now, I can sleep happy knowing that by some fluke I turned out a "good" creme Anglaise.