Trouble with Sabrina & Charlotte

Last week I promised to be better with my camera. The week before I swore to practise and improve my piping. Have I dont either of these things? Seemingly not. This weeks class followed the same pattern as the last two, learning one of our potential exam dishes and one other cake.

The exam dish this week was the Sabrina cake. This cake is taken from 1954 film, Sabrina, whereby a girl heads of to learn to bake in Paris, falling in love in the process. She also, apparently, has a particular penchant for strawberries. The cake therefore is a rolled sponge, filled with a strawberry mousse. It is topped with chocolate covered marzipan, piping, pistachios etc etc. This cake is apparently the one students dread the most for the exam, but strangely score highest on. Because the base of the cake is a spiral of sponge and mousse, when it is cut into it has lovely, (hopefully) even stripes running through it. Although I had, again, forgotten my camera in class, fortunately I had my phone to snap the chefs offering

The demo of this was okay. I was pleased to of tempured my chocolate on my first attempt. Heat to 45˚C, cool to 27˚C, warm to 31˚C by touch and hope it sets with a shine. However, I was not pleased when I swiftly ruined my beautifully tempered chocolate by holding my knife at the wrong angle when marking it and leaving a bit of a mess behind. Alas, C'est la vie. Other than that I'd say my efforts were average, passable for the exam, but not high scoring.

Next up was the return of the Charlotte. Some of you may remember from last term that I kind of fell for Charlotte so I was pleased to have her back in my life. This time we were making a chestnut (Marron) mousse encased in a sweet ladyfinger sponge. The idea is to pipe the sponge so that it holds its shape and  gives the outside of the cake a bit of class. The decoration for this cake is a marzipan scroll piped with "Marron" (not Moron/morron/momman). The cake is finished with a white chocolate border

I'm sure you'll be surprised to hear that it was the piping that the main problem of this Charlotte. Shockingly piping on the wibbly wobbly scroll was pretty much impossible and at the end of class we had many interesting versions of "Marron" across the class. I swiftly avoided the moron trap, instead piping something that the chef interpretted as a cry for my mother "Maman". Seeing this, he advised me to keep my border as simple as possible, I did and it turned out better.

Despite this, I do still have a soft spot for Charlotte, I might even ask her to spend Valentines with me.

Hungarian Hippos

Technology has not been on my side this week, or at least not on my mind.  My week began with the disappearance of my beloved iPhone putting me out of communitcation, never on time and a bit lost. This set me up nicely for forgetting to charge my camera meaning, I'm afraid, this blog is a bit sparse. I managed to use the last second of power to quickly snap my three offerings but couldn't take any of the chefs, nor attempt to get a decent picture. Nonetheless, on we plough.

This week we made the second potential exam dish - the Opera cake. This is layers of sponge, ganache and coffee buttercream. My taste buds have only just matured towards coffee and can be a bit hit and miss, but this cake really is delicious. Its topped with a lovely shiny glaze and, of course, piped with chocolate. This week I was surprisingly pleased with my piping. It was perhaps a bit  simplistic after seeing the chefs swirly border (which I'm sure you can imagine by now) but it was neat enough and my writing was at least legiable this time!

The next cake of the week was a traditional Hungarian cake called the Dobos which is a thin biscuit-y sponge layered with mountains of ganache. The stacked cake is cut at an angle in half, shaped into a triangle and covered in more ganache and a glaze. The cutting is quite tricky because of the different textures of the cake and the unusual angle. In demo I thought the cake was a tad dry so I gave it a good rum syrup soak and it seemed to go down alright.

The third cake of the week was a very pretty raspberry roulade that made me go over all girly and giggly whilst making it. It is what I think should be called hippopotamus pink and tastes light and fluffy like a raspberry cloud. What a delight!

As pretty as a...

I've got my camera fully charged and ready to go along with a new phone so next week I will be more on the ball.

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. 

Catch up

The holidays are swiftly coming to an end, which for most people means the return of the daily duties of work or university, but for a lucky few it is a return to the teaching kitchens of pastry school. Monday is the greatly anticipated return to LCB with new recipes, new timetable and a whole set of beatifully cleaned whites just waiting to be covered in fresh chocolate stains. So before school begins, here is a quick catch up blog of things that may, or indeed may not, be of interest.

1. Books.

For Christmas I recieved two wonderful books that have kept me feeling both entertained and hungry. The first is The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit which discusses 99 key flavours, suggesting flavour pairings for each as well as recipe suggestions. The pairings range from very classical suggestions such as chocolate&orange or lamb&mint to the more adventurous like coffee&avocado. For anyone interested in foods, I can't recommend it highly enough. Not only is the book itself rather lovely, its content makes you want to hop up to rummage through your stock cupboards and bring new life to old recipes.

The second is a book from school called The Chocolate Bible. This is a pretty self explanatory cookbook that covers all things chocolate. I've only had chance to make a few of the recipes, some of which are variations of things I learned in the first term, but they have come out a real treat. I particularly enjoyed a recipe for an iced chocolate and apricot crumble. Definately a good addition to my cookbook collection, complete with saliva-inducing pictures. 

2. Two for One Wednesdays

My timetable this term has taken inspiration from Orange Wednesdays it would seem. Last term we followed a fairly regular routine of demos in the morning, baking in the afternoon. This term we have two days of only demos, followed by a double baking session on wednesdays - totting up to a 6 hour session. This results in two problems. Firstly is a purely logistical problem of how to transport my baked goods home. One girl can only handle so much tupperware. Secondly there is the task of giving this glorious day a suitable name. Answers on a postacard. In the mean time it shall be known to one and all as two cake wednesday (I'm sure we can do much better).

3. French

On another sidenote, my new years resolution this year is to not only take on French pâtisserie but also try and brush up on the language itself. Thus far this has meant scouring the internet for suitable evening classes, audiobooks and perhaps even a tandem partner. Ooh-la-la indeed.

Supreme Cuisine

Just as we through a tea-party in our third and final term at school, the cuisine chefs host a dinner evening. Its held in the school and is a chance for them to create a menu to show off their skills and, more importantly, for us to eat it. We had canapes, amuse bouche, starter, main, cheese course, pudding and petit fours and champagne flowing. It was really great to have a chance to try some of the cuisine and see what they get up to in their kitchens. Here are a few, fairly low quality, pictures of the delight of the night, themed la Belle Époque

One of many glorious canapes - tuna tartar

Menu

Amuse Bouche - Espresso Trompette

Starter - Menage a Foie Gras; parfait, confit & Seared

Main - Confit belly of pork & stuffed pigs trotter with black truffle tian & madeira jus

Cheese - Parfait of roquefort with poached pears

Dessert - Praline glace & caramalised apple, pain d'epice mousse with spiced wine syrup

Tea & Petit fours

We left the meal tipsy, happy and stuffed right to the brim.