Last of the Mousses

Im not sure whether or not it was due to the particularly high sugar content of our cakes this week, but the spirits in the kitchen were high. These are the last two mousse-y cakes we are making before moving on to chocolate next week. Not only are they full of cream and chocolate, but fun to make and provide the best guilty pleasure when eaten. That licking-out-the mixing-bowl type guilt. I'm sure when you hear about them you'll understand why.

Cake number one is the poires au caramel religieuses. It consists of: a chocolate sponge that is sprinkled with nuts before baking, caramel poached pears, a rich chocolate mousse, a chocolate glaze and, lovingly piped, chocolate pear decoration. The mousse and pears are layered inside the nutty sponge case and the combination is a real winner. It looks a little something like this:

In order to make the chocolate pears for the top we had to temper not only dark, but white chocolate too. White chocolate is the hardest to temper because it is the lease pure chocolate and thus can be a bit tempremental. Having said that, I followed the chefs advice, showing my chocolate a bit of TLC and even whispering it a few sweet nothings, until it set with the required snap and shine. Generally I'm quite pleased with how the cake turned out. I kept my piping simple again: a tactic that seems to be working a bit better for me. The only qualm I have is that I forgot to give my chocolate pears a good taps before they set so they are mottled with pesky air pockets. Nevermind, another lesson to learnt. 

The second cake of the week, white chocolate and pistachio entrement, is the real sugar kick. Although I think the cake is reminiscent of a childrens party, it would probably be a nightmare to have at one, unless your preared for some seriously hyper kiddies. Not only is this cake made with a wonderful white chocolate mousse, but it has a hidden layer of red berry jelly  waiting inside. The posh twist that moves this away from the toddlers menu is the pistachio sponge and the tempered dark chocolate decoration. The cake is finished with a white chocolate glaze with dark chocolate marbling.

As you can see from the rather galactic finish on the chocolate, we got to play with a little bit of shimmer this week. Having pots of gold and silver glitter in the kitchen was a bit like being allowed to play with your Mum's make up when you were younger. Should I go for silver-violet or silver-pink? Decisions, decisions. Once the big choice was made, we brushed this onto an embrossed acetate sheet, poured over some tempered chocolate, and scored in the shapes we wanted. I had a slightly scary moment when I was removing my cake ring which caused the mousse to drag a bit but other than that it was smiles all round.

What I like best about this cake, apart from the taste, is that from the ouside it looks quite grown up and posh, but when it is sliced the inside has fun layers of green, white and red hiding under the surface. 

Now who wouldn't want to dip their fingers in those mixing bowls?

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. 

Classy Victoria Sponge

Continuing on the theme of cakes, mixing and aeration methods, this week we turned our hands at the genoise sponge.  Although in home cooking, most cakes are classified as some type of sponge, this is not the case for pâtissiers. The genoise is a super light  and is described as a sponge due to its resemblance to the natural under-the-sea type sponge when cooked.  There are a few easy mistakes to be made when making this cake. Firstly the aeration of the eggs (by hand of course) is done at 40˚C over a bain-marie. This means keeping a close eye on the temperature because if it sneaks up those pesky egg proteins begin to coagulate. The second chance for error is folding in the flour. A light touch is definitely required to achieve the desired effect of coating the air pockets in flour rather than bursting them altogether. In demo, once chef had her perfect sponge in the oven she showed us how to make a true buttercream to coat it and  a fresh jam filling. All of this was then put together in a classic Victoria sponge sandwich style and rolled into a roulade as an added class bonus.

Before turning to demo, I want to take a brief interlude to tell you how well I have been fed this week - so very well. The two main events of feeding both happened on Thursday, firstly with a beautiful homecooked Finnish lunch cooked up by the lovely Henrika - a girl from class - and secondly by the Superior chefs in school who put on a great evening to show off their now honed skills, which probably deserves a post of its own. Anyway, inbetween demo and practical this week we truly feasted and rolled up to class with a full set of food babies.

Taa-sty

Anyway, stuffed as we were, we had a cake to bake! This is the last of our potential exam pieces and is a real tricky one. Again the masking of the cake is a tricky one as the more attempt you have to get a smooth finish the more likely the butercream is to become overworked. There is then the great risk of ruining your cake at the last hurdle with the dreaded chocolate piping. Although mine was a bit smoother this week, my design ended up being somewhat smaller and lopsided than it was in my head. 

Oh crumbs!

Friday was another day of cake making, however this time we got a hearty workout as we turned to mechanical aeration. The cake of the hour was the Alhambra cake. This is a recipe specific to LCB, and is a take on the protected recipe of the Sachertorte. It is very rich, very moist, very chocolaty and very very tasty. Alhambra consists of - a chocolate and hazlenut sponge, baked and brushed in a coffee and rum soaking syrup, filled with a rich chocolate ganache, covered in a layer of ganache, covered again in a chocolate glaze, piped with the word 'Alhambra' and decorated with marzipan roses. Basically its not a last minute jobby. But this doesnt mean the chef didnt manage to make it look like it was. In demo I was, yet again, slightly astounded by the skills on show. Especially the perfectly smooth glossy finish (you will see why later). I think I'll let the cake speak for itself.

In class there was a lot of chocolate, which for me means a lot of mess. The cake itself was quite fun to make. First off we made our batter. To get the necesary aeration we made it in three parts, dry ingredients, creamed 'wet' ingredients and a french meringue and gently folded them together, trying to avoid losing the air we'd spent 10 minutes whipping into our meringue. As they baked we made the rest of our components, ready to finish off. It is the finishing off that caused me problems. Specifically the chocolate glaze. In demo chef poured hers over her ganache covered cake and it settled in a perfect glossy coat. Mine chose to be bubbly, uneven and a bit dull. Not good. I hasten to say the picture has actually made it look worse than it was, even so I think my report card would be saying 'must try harder'. Despite this the cake still tasted too good to last very long and I ended up serving it over the bar at work when customers spied it lurking in the back.  

Bubble trouble

My rose (well okay then, carnation)