The big bad basic exam

I've been a bit slack on the old blog front recently but what with the end of term and begining of Christmas I think I should be forgiven. Over the last few weeks we havent had all that much school, what with the exams looming. We did manage to fit in a rather fun lesson on truffles which took a somewhat childish turn towards chocolate face painting, well on my part at least. But with the exception of a quick spell as the chocolate cat I've been spending my time reading up on theory, learning recipes and, of course, baking.

The written exam went pretty well, somehow all the recipes stayed in my head and most of the technichal questions were easy enough. To be honest, there isnt all that much else to say about it. I got 90%.

The practical exam is a bit of a different tale. Much to my dismay, the recipe I pulled out the hat was the genoise. Strangely, although I had practised the sponge and made it well at home, it was still the one I felt the most unconfortable with because there is quite a lot of space for error. Space which I managed to squeeze myself into during my exam. I've ben putting off writing this for a while because, to be honest, I felt a bit disappointed in myself after the exam. Everything went okay, except my butercream. I didnt whisk my eggs enough and I knew as soon as I had done it that it had gone wrong. Other than that, I made my sponge and jam well, covered my cake in dodgy buttercream and left feeling a bit glum. Although after spending the rest of my morning drinking champagne and eating cheese with my classmates I felt a bit perkier. I got my results the next day and, as expected, most of my comments revolved around the buttercream. My mark, considering, was okay at 73.

Overall for the year I got 79.2 which is annoyingly close to the 80% merit boundary but we'll get there next time. Maybe.

The rest of my class had some really great results and we had a lovely time at graduation, firstly being a bit posh at the Dorchester and then spending the rest of the evening guzzling beer and cocktails in an american style diner in Angel. Good times indeed.

What an attractive bunch

Its been a really great term all round and has truly flown by. Quite looking forward to a couple of weeks  enjoying the countryside snow before heading back to it to face intermediate. 

Friends and Fours

Without getting too soppy, this weeks blog is going to have to be a bit of a shout out to my fellow budding pastry chefs in group D. Since that momentous day when we met in the Boulangerie in the beginnings of October we have become quite a close knit group and they are certainly the cherry on the top of my LCB days. Anyway, enough of that for now, time to talk about the matter at hand: petit fours.  Petit four or ‘small oven’ are miniture treats served with your coffee at the end of a hefty meal, and should be no more than 2-bite sized. They can be quite a variety of things from meringues and biscuits to pastries, chocolates and fudges but the one thing they must be is small. I do quite like the idea of miniture food, mostly because it looks cute and so with a whole variety to cover I was looking forward to the lessons on the topic.

We began on Thursday with a demo that covered sables hollandais, meringue a l'amande and tuiles a l'orange. Sables biscuits are named so because of their sand-like texture, They are like a french shortbread and come in many varieties. The aim of our sable game was to make both a chocolate and a plain mix and use them together to make patterened biscuits. For the almond meringues we were shown three different ways of piping and finishing off the mixture and the tuille was an alternative to the plain batter we first covered way back in October. Because petit fours are so small, even low quantity recipes produce enough to feed the masses so there was more than enough to go round after class, all served up on a mirrored platter.

Tuiles

In class our task was to make the sables and meringues and if there was anytime we could make the tuiles as a class as an added bonus. The sables can be quite time consuming because there is alot of cutting and fiddly work to get the patterns and they need to be chilled inbetween layers, but the end result is satisfying enough to justify the time spent. At the end of class we found ourselves with a miraculous half an hour left to frantically make some tuilles. The result was a lot of mad dashes up and down the stairs to the stockroom to get the ingredients that hadnt been accounted for and alot of hands around one bowl zesting, mixing & piping. Without enough time to chill the batter it spread a fair amount across the tray in the oven and we ended up with what chef called 'road kill tuile'! Nothing a bit of artistic liscence and a bagette rack couldnt solve though. They were an added bonus not only because they make a tasty take home treat but also because we seemed to be the only group who managed to make them.

Selection of sables

Almond Meringues

Best roadkill I ever did see

On Friday it was time to be shown another multitude of sweet treats. Class covered two types of fudge, florentines, financiers and macarons. Macarons have, much like cupcakes, become very fashionable over the past few years with a lot of shops stocking all sorts of brightly coloured and different flavoured styles and so are potentially quite important for the budding pastry chef, but do require a bit of time to fully master. Heres the end platter from demo, my favourite were the financiers topped with fresh raspberries.

With alot to get done in class we worked together as a group in practical this week. I quite enjoyed it as it was a bit like being in a real kitchen. We each had to make our own macarons because that was where we were being marked but the rest was a group effort all round. The end results of everything were really good and dispite everyone being a bit tired and ill we worked well as a group. Anyway, before I start getting soppy again, here are the pictures

Petit Fours a la group D

Very bright macarons

We are heading into our last weeks of the first term, which has well and truly flown by. First exams start on Tuesday with our theory exam so a weekend of revision awaits me. So if anyone need to know egg coagulation temperatures in the near furture then I'm definately your gal.. 

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.

In the loop

Yesterday we had a lesson all about exams and assessments to tap into our fears of impending failure. I'm sure there are some of you out there pondering how we get graded so I thought I'd post a quick break down.  Our overall mark for each term is broken down into three parts.

One.
Weighing in at 45% of the overall mark is our day to day practicals at school. For each of our practicals we are marked on four criteria: hygiene, organisation, presentation and preparation. Hopefully I will find out some of my marks in this weeks tutorial

Two.
A written theory exam worth 10%. At the start of December there is a one hour written exam consisting of multiple choice questions, short answer questions and true or false questions. Hopefully a chance to get some scores on doors.

Three.
The main event, stacking up 45% in one fell swoop is the practical cooking exam. Heres the gist of it. We are told the 3 potentially recipes (in this case Lemon meringue pie, choux pastry buns and swans, genoise sponge with raspberry jam). We then have till the day of our exam to learn the recipes and practise to perfection. On the day we pick a number out of a hat and produce the recipe from memory. We are then judged firstly during the exam by a chef on our recipe, technique and organisation and secondly, by jury of chefs on presentation and taste. Think masterchef. We have 2 and a half hours and for every minute (up to 10 mins) over we lose 2% from our overall mark, any time after that is a fail.

Now for the grading:

50-79.99% = pass
80-89.99% = credit
90-100% = distinction

Basically to get anything above a pass you have to be pretty much flawless. Hense, I am off to bake a lemon meringue pie.

For now I leave you with some quick fire true or false questions. Answers on a postcard.

True or False....

1. The term imbibage means to spread
2. The main component of egg white is water
3. Pastry cream is cooked till is coats the base of the spoon
4. Dark chocolate is melted at a maximum of 74˚C


Bonne chance.