Cake Decorating; ACT 1

While I've been away we've been working on plated desserts and chocolate sculptures...neither are getting posted right now, though I will get them up soon! I'm promising.

In March I started thinking about how I was going to decorate my wedding cake in the final section of my pastry program. I had come up with what I thought was going to be a great concept...THEN I found out we get to design three cakes!!! How excited am I? And how unprepared...oops! Good thing I think quickly when it comes to cake ;)

Our first cake is a faux/styrofoam cake. I wanted to save my original concept for my final cake and at the same time I wanted my faux cake to be a fairly simple concept, being my very first time working with fondant. Initially I wanted to do a beach cake, then realized that could potentially involve sand and/or sea shells, neither of which I was interested in incorporating into a wedding cake. I switched my concept slightly to an ocean theme...I know, right off the bat it doesn't seem that there's much difference, but trust me there is.

Here's a final shot of my completed Ocean Cake:


Overall I'm very pleased with the outcome, and, of course, there are many things I learned and would do differently if remaking this cake! Oh the joys of learning. You are unable to tell in any of the photos I have but I painted the sand dollars with a shiny pearl paint and luster dusted the starfish with a shiny white.

Once I formed the starfish & did the detail work on their backsides I laid them in these bowls to dry with their rounded shapes overnight & then piped the detail work on their front this morning:


The coral and sand dollars were piped out the day before in royal icing:

For the coral I used two different piping tips and just stayed focused on making sure each branch was connected to another branch, that way when I removed the icing from the parchment all the parts were connected....that is, until I dropped some pieces and they broke...though on the bright side it gave me differing sizes of coral. For the sand dollars I piped a large circle with a small circle in the middle then diluted some royal icing and "flooded" the space between to get a smooth, even surface. The next morning I piped the detail before applying to the cake.

Doing the work to roll out enough fondant to wrap around a 12", 9" and a 6" cake was much more work than I'd anticipated, mostly because I couldn't work quickly enough to prevent the fondant from drying out a little bit before being able to get it on the cake. I love the color and shape of the waves, not to high & not too low:

I watch a lot of cake competitions on the Food Network and often hear judges talk about the seams of fondant on the back of the cake so I wanted to snap a shot of my seams...considering this is the first seam I've made I'm saving it as a reference of how far I've come once I am able to make a seamless seam!


Some additional/close up shots I took of the cake:


I promised my chef that while I really wanted to do an ocean themed wedding cake I promised that I would make it classy and I'm certain that I've achieved that. The next two cakes are actual cake so I'm going to be working with a potentially lopsided cake (my frosting skills aren't quite up to par yet) and so I'll get lots of practice in patience :) I'll keep the blog updated as I move through this final section. I'm down to 10 more days of school until I'm done and off to a six week externship...yay!!! I am so excited.

A Pastry Picture Show

At this moment I am in the middle of a three-day holiday weekend AND my mid-term final! I think I am one of only a small few who are pleased to have a break in the middle of such a test. Most of my classmates would rather just work straight through the four day test and get it done, but I am grateful to not be wearing myself out and being able to give my head a break, not to mention my body (as I've been lounging around as much as possible this weekend). Eh, to each his own...and in this case I mean it mostly because I'm pleased with the outcome ;)

So what have I been up to? Mostly we've been making petit fours, which are bite sized desserts made of cakes, cookies, tarts, mousses, etc. Lots of good stuff. The most fun out f what we've been doing in class is that a lot of our petit fours are ones which we've got to "invent". We have had to come up with flavor combinations, cake vs. cookie vs. tart, decoration style, and even determine the shapes and sizes of our petit fours. It has been an absolute blast getting to do this kind of stuff.

Before we got around to petit fours we did some pate a choux (pronounced "shoe"). This is the dough/batter with which eclairs are made, profiterols, cream puffs, etc. I am definitely not a fan of pate a choux, I find it to be so boring, and Chef was sure he was going to turn me (as he has with many other things we've made) however it didn't happen this time. I did get pics though:

Here we have some eclairs, regular & coffee flavored (I guess coffee flavored eclairs are quite popular in France). Above the eclairs are a pastry called Salambos. They are the pate a choux filled with pastry cream (very similar to an eclair) and then dipped in caramel (and I actually did, accidentally, put my finger in the ridiculously hot caramel!!! OMG)

Cream puffs; a classic. Pate a choux filled with a bit of our homemade jam (of which we have a ridiculous amount & I think Chef just tells us to put it in things we normally wouldn't just to use it up) and a Chantilly cream, topped with chocolate sprinkles. Aren't they so pretty?

As we approach our mid-term most of us are present to how intense this program is and find as many opportunities to goof off and reach for sanity! This was Karla's step towards the light. She's drawn our entire class in cariacature. On top is Chef, of course (the big hat gives that away) then from left to right is; Bob, Jordan, me, Karla, Breanna, Alex, and Dannica. Along the way Karla made commentary about certain people which I won't go into detail about here because of the comments she made, none are nice...oops!

Jordan, my partner, and I made this delightful treat! It's got a cookie base with an apricot mousse and a whipped cream rosette. About a week ago I told Chef I was burnt out on rosettes and couldn't make anymore. He didn't seem to like that response...too bad, almost everything we make gets topped with a rosette...I require much more variety in my day/life/work, etc. Eh, se la vive!

Here's a caption of a few other petit fours made in class that day...lots and lots of chocolate!

While we're not yet at the part where we got to make up our own petit fours this one is by far my favorite one before that point. The petit four itself is pretty basic; cake, fruit jelly, mousse, another rosette (oh my!). Chef showed Jordan and I how to do this marbling effect on the glaze so we had some great depth to the cake and each piece was a little bit different (which I, personally find appealing. Shhh, don't tell Chef). Then as Jordan and I further explored decorating we got this crazy circus look going and I just fell in love with it.

Here's another class sample. Everyone was making really incredible stuff!!!

Now we're getting to make up our own...this is my Sushi Jelly Roll. First off I wanted to make a jelly roll and I wanted it to be coconut then Chef helped me put some finishing touches on it and recommended I go for a "sushi" look. I had no idea what he was talking about until I started to put everything together. I fell in love with this one too. Each individual pieces was too large to be a petit four so I got to figure out how to cut them smaller without losing the sushi look. It too some work but I pulled it off. With a little more time and attention I could've really cleaned them up and had really professional pieces...these aren't so bad though and totally cute!

...and when I told Chef what I wanted to do with these he didn't seem as much on board! Gianduja mousse (a chocolate & hazelnut combo) and cake glazed in chocolate! I love 'em!

Class photo, everyone smile!!!

THIS is our piece de resistance. Jordan and I got to create a petit four together and he had this great idea for a strawberry shortcake. While I loved it I didn't want anything plain. We built the structure together, going upwards, and I suggested we make it with a banana mousse. OMG, it was delicious...every single one that I ate! Once we told Chef what we were going to make he suggested we wrap the tall petit four in a chocolate cage. What! You can do that?!?!?!? So once we built our yumminess Chef taught us how to make the cages and we went to town. Not only was it fun I truly think this was the best petit four I was a part of making!

This pic is a class sample. That petit four, second from the left, is also mine and Jordan's. He and I both lived in Hawai'i and he thought it would be fun for us to make a dessert in homage to Hawai'i. We had this create idea of a cookie base with coconut mousse and sauteed pineapple in brown butter. While it all sounded nice in our heads a few things went awry along the way; the coconut mousse wouldn't set and while it was going to be the top of our piece it quickly became the bottom, then I put too much gelatin in the pineapple and it was super gummy and kept tearing coming out of the mold. While it wasn't what we wanted to present we were still pretty sure the idea was great!!!!

So many colors and flavors!

Our mid-term is consisting of breads, cakes, tarts, cookies, & petit fours. Things are coming to me a lot easier than in previous tests, which is a great sign! This time I want to post some of my test items...hopefully this time they will be post worthy!!!

Be well, eat happy!
Love.

My Week In Cookies....yummy!!!

Honestly I figured waiting out a four-day week to post wouldn't leave me that much catching up to do. Not quite. We made lots of cookies this week!!! I've said before that I have gone into this program disliking certain items, which we then make, and I come out realizing I've just been eating crappy versions of this or that. Such a revelation occurred again this week. We started the week off with shortbread cookies. This is a cookies I generally find to be too dry and quite boring...well I used to think of it like that:

From upper left to right we have Lemon Shortbread cookies (two kinds side-by-side), Spritz Rings (also a shortbread type cookie), then Pistachio Shortbread (in the bottom right corner)

Simply mixing the batter for the lemon shortbread cookies was heaven! As far as I could tell we used a pretty basic shortbread recipe and added the zest of one lemon to it. We coated them in sugar a couple of different ways, and who would've thought I actually prefer them being coated one way over another (I prefer the sides coated rather than the tops), first brushing them with cream. We did this with scones also and I know that sometimes people will do this with milk rather than cream when making something similar. I'm going to go ahead and recommend that you switch to using cream, the heavier the better. It makes such a difference! I promise.

Having previously stated my, prior opinion on shortbread, eating these was like lemon butter melting in my mouth. OMG!!! I had to consciously stop myself from eating each and every one. It's hard to pay attention when they're so small :( Not only was the cookies soft, which was great, that lemon was such a romantic touch. My sister took a huge bag of cookies to work with her and everyone gobbled them up, of course, and one woman requested a copy of the shortbread recipe. Apparently they were the biggest hit!!! I'm telling you...Y-U-M-M-Y...too bad they haven't figured out how to transmit taste over the Internet.

Anyone care for some Biscotti?:

Pistachio/Almond Biscotti

I was also not a fan of biscotti coming into class. Another cookie I generally find to be too tough and unappetizing. These, however, I didn't even try. I will say this though...tough they were not! It seems biscotti are generally as tough as they are because they are "twice-baked", or toasted would be another way to describe it. While these were dense, mine were so crumbly before toasting. This is commonly a good thing. After toasting, before coating them in chocolate, they were stable (none fell apart in the bowl of chocolate or anything) and the toasting seemed to add a crispness to them. Again I didn't try a single one. I'm not much of a fan of pistachios and Chef is so we make lots and lots of pistachio stuff, which I hardly ever try :( Rumor has it they are crumbly and tasty. I'm good with that.

Good morning Madeline!:

I was sooooooo excited to make Madelines. We prepared the batter at the end of class one day and allowed it to rest in the refrigerator overnight to let the flour absorb as much liquid as possible. The following morning the first thing we did was prepare our pans and bake up some madelines....ohhhh yummy! One kid in my class didn't even eat breakfast because he knew we'd be making these. They were quite scrumptious! Again the batter had lemon, which in my opinion could be added to almost anything and enhance the heck out of it! These were so dense and cakey and delicious.

As you can see mine are quite dark on one side. I think this is because we used dark coated madeline pans rather than the shiny, silvery ones. Chef said he knows nothing of one having any difference in cooking temps. but I'm going to call foul and go on record saying that "it does make a difference using dark pans vs. lighter, or glass, pans". Not a huge deal, while these are as gorgeous to look at as we're used to they were definitely fun to eat. Again, I had to consciously stop myself from picking up one after another after another.

The other thing I wanted to note was while we were standing back in the oven area I was mentioning to Chef that the ones we were baking had huge domes on the backs while Madeline's that you purchase at say Starbucks, have flat bottoms. He said that's because Starbucks doesn't know what they are doing. I love when the "French-righteousness" comes out in Chef!

Our next cookie is a Baton Marechaux and is basically a sponge cookie:
Similar to how we would make a sponge cake; make a meringue and fold in dry ingredients and bake, we made these. We made a basic meringue and folded in almond powder and baked. I'm a complete and utter sucker for ANYTHING with meringue and so these just kept making their way into my mouth. We piped all these little rounds, baked them, then filled them with our freshly made berry jam and topped them of with a second cookie. They sort of look like mini-hamburgers to me, though taste nothing like it. Super sweet...between the meringue, the jam and the powdered sugar topping they are outrageously sweet! And small, which doesn't help my lack of ability to gauge how many I've actually consumed. I think cookies is going to be another 10 pounds on my body if I don't begin to check myself! (P.S. I am going hiking after this entry!!!)

Ok, we're almost caught up for the week...

On Tuesday, as we didn't have class Monday :), we made some inverted pastry puff (remember this is the pastry with the butter on the outside, making it much more delicious as classic puff pastry! With that pastry dough we made an "interesting" version of palmiers (if you recall these were my absolute favorite of our first journey into puff pastry), some "thing" called a William Tell, which I found not just difficult to make but also to eat (no pic) and bow ties. The bow ties were a bit more complicated than I would've guessed initially but I had a few come out right and they are quite cute:

Friday was filled with Oatmeal R....wait a minute...where is the pic of my Chocolate Chip cookies???? Hang on...

Ok, let's back track for just a moment. Chocolate Chip cookies:
I have two Forever Favorites when it comes to the pastry world. One is the brownie and while it is highly unlikely that we're ever going to make brownies in class we did make my second favorite which is chocolate chip cookies. I mean really, who doesn't like a chocolate chip cookie? Or two or even three of them!!! I really like the texture of these, they were soft and chewy! That's a very important part of the chocolate chip cookie to me. I know some of you like a tough and crispy cookie but you're crazy and there's probably some type of medication that you should be on. But that's just my opinion...a clinical one, don't forget my degree in psychology prior to this one ;) I did not like that the batter was very saturated with the flavor of baking soda...no good! I am going to make these again and either sift the dry ingredients two or three times total or see what happens if I lessen the amount of baking soda. I'm guessing the sifting won't make much difference seeing as how almost every bite was full of baking soda right on the tongue, but I'm willing to try! Also these weren't super sweet, which I liked. There was more to this cookie than just SWEET!!! And I like that in a cookie. We'll see how it goes next time...I have high hopes for this cookie.

As we were...Friday morning we made Oatmeal Raisin cookies and these were so yummy! We used these big ice cream scoops to measure out the cookie sizes and ended up with these gigantic cookies:
Lots of oats, again not too sweet, and chewy!!!! OMG! They are sitting on my dining room table as I write this and it's taking almost everything I've got to not devour a bunch and call it breakfast!!! The funny thing with these is after we pulled them out of the oven we had to deal with the fact that as they spread out the edges got all crispy (use double sheet pans when baking to avoid this problem) but Chef was curious why we didn't press them down and mark them with a criss cross for pattern. I explained to him that traditionally we only do that with peanut butter cookies, it wouldn't have occurred to us to do that with any other type of cookie. It made me think, what would someone think if they saw that criss cross pattern on a cookie in a display window...wouldn't you just think it's a peanut butter cookie with oatmeal in it? Huh.

Lastly we played with different types of coconut macaroons yesterday. These are a meringue based macaroon which actually was air dried out at room temp. before being baked, which I found to be an interesting technique, granted I've never made macaroons before.
Allow me to guide you through what you're looking at here. No they are not burnt! Some of us decided to put chocolate chips in our macaroons. To make these type we heated up some egg whites and sugar over a double boiler to 140 degrees, and then added all the dry ingredients. I was the first one to finish my egg whites and was quite "out of it" by this point in the day and my fellow students were helping me by reminding me to add ALL my dry ingredients, as I was leaving some out. Someone went to remind me about my chocolate chips and without thinking I dumped them all in to my 140 degree solution...NOT the smartest idea I've ever had! They quickly began melting all over the place and my batter began looking less and less appealing. Rest assured, while not pretty they are tasty!

Next is a Rocher Coco (more of a wet macaroon):
These are right up my alley. They are moist on the inside and oh so coconutty. They almost remind me of the coconut tarts we made a few weeks back. The recipe is similar but not exact. And the best part is how easy these are to make...too easy, and no fat (lots and lots and lots and lots of sugar...but no fat).

So that's my week in cookies. We also made some savory petit fours, none of which I found to be great. We'll continue next week with more cookies and add in some sweet petit fours...oh goody!
Must leave you now and go for a hike...I'm about 15 pounds heavier than when I initially began class and the time has come to put my foot down. Besides I want to be able to enjoy what I'm making, not feel guilty and lazy for not figuring out how to make my life workable!

Peace and love to you!

Keep On Keepin' On

Cake finals are over!!! Whooo hoooo! Seriously who knew all the work that goes into one freakin' cake!!! For our final we made six cakes and six tarts over four days. I'm not even sure if that seems like a lot to you but it was absolutely INSANE!!!! Especially when you're doing every detail from scratch and by hand. One of my fellow students wasn't even able to complete all 12 items by the deadline and I was working almost right up to it. Most of the other students were done with a couple of hours to spare but no one had a good week...and I mean NO ONE!!! It was madness for the word "go"....

But it's over and I have a couple left over photos from the last part of our cake section to share. The week before finals Chef went on vacation and we had a substitute culinary chef. Now our sub-chef was a well trained chef with many, many years in the industry and does teach a pastry section in each of his classes. However he is not a pastry chef and as you may have noticed there is a difference, a huge difference. While Chef was on vacation we were to learn how to make an Opera cake ( a very famous French cake created by the even more famous French pastry chef Gaston Lenotre) and a Black Forest Cake (while a bit more common still a popular cake), a Vertigo cake (some pistachio delight) as well as practicing our frosting of a cake in 20 minutes and our piping skills. We had five days to accomplish this, and more, much more....though we didn't get anywhere near "more"...where do I even start????

The first cake we made with our substitute Chef was the Opera cake.

This cake is quite delicious well I would've said that a couple of weeks ago. Now I cannot stand this atrocious mess of a cake. There are a gazillion layers to this cake. You have a base of a jaconde cake (thin, sponge-like) drenched in coffee flavored syrup...and I use the term "drenched" with much intention. Trying to figure out how much was enough and how much was too much was an extremely thin line...extremely thin. There are a total of three layers of this sponge in the cake and each layer was coated differently than the others because gauging it was so difficult. Mind you that if you over drench it the cake will start to fall apart and as you add the layers to it it'll become so heavy that it'll collapse on itself. Then you've got a layer of chocolate ganache, cake (soaked, of course) a layer of coffee buttercream, cake, and then the tiniest layers of ganache and buttercream, then a glaze and decor.

In my life, even prior to pastry school, I've made lots of buttercream, never with a creme anglaise base, but lots of different kinds. It seems simple enough; make a creme anglaise (basically a custard) whip until cooled and add butter. Yea, not even close. The instructions are the same but the outcome was a freak of pastry nature! No one got a decent buttercream and I think we all used different techniques. So you have to figure that's eight of us doing it slightly different from one another and not a single one of us got a real and decent buttercream.

In the end this cake was so disastrous our sub-Chef had us remake it on our next class day. Ug! That was such an utter unsuccess that we had to make another one at the end of the week. And the reason we kept at it for so long was because it was part of our final to make this Opera cake. OMG for real!!!! For our final Chef allowed us to use a buttercream recipe we were all familiar with and my cake ended up turning out great, minus the fact that I under-drenched my cakes based on a previous disaster with another of my final cakes but that's another story entirely.

The other haunting experience I had with our sub-Chef was the Black Forest cake...and again it's related to how to best soak a cake...oh there is definitely a theme here!!! So our sub-Chef keeps going on and on about how to best soak a cake and emphasizing drenching it beyond its own saturation point. So I did that with my Black Forest cake...wanna see what happened to it???
I couldn't even frost it because it was falling apart every time my spatula touched it. I think this was the very same day my friend Zeke had checked out my previous blog entry and commented how good and professional my cakes have been looking...so of course I sent him this pic right away. No no, wouldn't want my ego to get too carried away now would we???? ;)

At the end of the day our sub-Chef had up present our works and while I refused to decorate this mess I had to at least clean it up so this is what it looked like for presentation:
Not too bad, considering what it looked like a couple of hours prior to it's clean up and stint in the freezer. We also had to remake this cake later that week and while I don't have a picture my cake turned out beautifully. My edges were nearly perfect and my frosting job was nearly immaculate so I completely redeemed myself....as I always do.

I was definitely not born with the bakers gene but I am really good at saving my own ass and this is never anything I had to do when studying psychology. That was a world that made so much sense to me automatically, without even thinking about it. This world is so foreign. I knew exactly what I was asking for when I asked to be involved more with my creative side, however my creative side has been suffocating for so long that sometimes it feels like chaos trying to pull off a piece of wonder like we do in class. I adore being there, though I don't think I've ever worked as hard as class demands of me, and I have a sense of pride in a completed cake or bread or whatever we're making. That isn't something I ever got working in psychology. So much of that world is about planting seeds and knowing that they will blossom when the time is right for the other person and that you are most likely not going to witness that, which was all well and good with me, though the instantaneous-ness of this world is sort of freaking me out a bit. I move slow and it drives Chef mad but it isn't out of laziness (which is what I think he thinks it is) its out of having no familiar bearings. Not only do I know very little about the pastry world, I know very little about what it is to feed any creative drive or desire in myself. Tangent over...who wants a Petite Basset?:
The main aspect of this cake, obviously, is the nougatine on top. The inside is an almond daquios cake (has a very meringue-like consistency & a slight crunch) and probably some mousse (I do not have the recipe in front of me, sorry). To make nougatine you would use something similar to fondant to achieve that chewy, marshmallowy texture. We tried that and didn't get what we wanted to instead we made almond brittle...not anything like nougatine but hey it looks good, right? The best part here was the sugar work. I really enjoy working with sugar. You bring it to this insane high temperature, throw some almonds in then hurry your ass off in order to lay it out, shape it, cut it, and slice it all before it hardens...all while it remains at this insane high temperature. Not sure what the rush is for me here but I just go crazy with job when we get to melt sugar and play with it.

Then we made a Vertigo cake, nothing too different with this cake but we did have to spray it with the spray gun to give it that outer coloring of green:
Granted mine isn't too green and was definitely less green that others in my class. I was totally excited about using the spray gun in class and then I stepped up to use it and it was so completely not fun. All we used was an electric spray paint gun you'd buy at Home Depot (which Chef calls a Pastry Chefs Playground) and fill it with melted white chocolate and green food coloring. Not sure why I didn't enjoy it but I hurried up as much as I could to get done and that's why my cake is green-ish instead of green.

Very popular cake though, here's the inside cut:
We have a fruit jelly on top, covered in pistachio mousse, a sponge cake underneath, more mousse (of course) and an hazelnut daquiose on the bottom.

For our final I presented my tarts first and Chef ripped me a new one. My doughs weren't fully cooked, my fillings, almost all, came out weird or just plain wrong, and I was absolutely miserable. The following day I presented cakes and reached complete redemption!!!!! This is definitely a niche for me. My redemption came in two ways....while I did not present six perfect cakes to him they were each put together well (except for my Mocha cake which was over drenched and began falling apart just like my Black Forest cake) and really well made cakes. I truly hope I've emphasized how difficult these cakes have been to actually make because it has not been easy in the slightest. So Chef explained the things that could've been better about them, all small bits of detail work, and was pleased to know that I get the technique of cake making and that I execute it well. Whew! That's a huge compliment. Also...mousses. Have you ever actually made a mousse? I hadn't until class and it is quite a specific process...especially as you add additional ingredient to it which immediately change the consistency of it. Each one of my cakes had "really good" mousses....YES!!!!! Huge deal to me!

Breads: DONE
Cakes: DONE
Cookies & Petit Fours: NEXT

Wow!  What a week...OMG.  Cakes, cakes & more cakes...who knew there were so many cakes to be made & eaten?!?!?  And what is with cakes that take all day to make???  While deciding to go to pastry school was a quick decision on my part I've made plenty of cakes in my day and not a one of them took me six hours to make and assemble.  Yowzaaaaaaa!

First up is a Success cake...why it's called a Success Cake, I have no idea.  Please don't think I didn't ask, of course I did, though Chef wasn't sure.  He made up some story about a chef putting a bunch of ingredients together and when the cake came out well made they considered it a success.  Eh, c'mon you can do better than that.  The other point Chef made was that when someone has a success you can give them this cake...oh so you mean it's like a congratulations cake?!?!  Maybe.  Nothing definitive has been determined.  What HAS been determined is that this cake is unlike anything you've ever had and will go down as the best you've ever tasted...Oh My Freakin' God...

If you want a great chocolate cake then THIS is the cake you want, I absolutely promise.

This beautiful cake is a Daquiose layer, which is a very meringue-y cake, with layers of ganache, more cake, and more ganache, plus there must be more to it but I left the recipe @ school and since we've made so many cakes I'm struggling keeping one straight from all the others.  When you bit into a slice of this cake you got a mouthful of ganache with crunchy, marshmallow-y cake inbetween.  It was perfect.  The textures in this cake balanced out so wonderfully.  The sides are decorated with macaroons which Chef baked for us.  They were crunchy on the outside & chewy on the inside, similar to the daquoise, dis-similar to any macaroon I've ever had ;).  Chef told us that this cake would be a great "success" but I had no idea how serious he was.  EVERYONE that had some freaked out over its delicious-ness, EVERYONE!!! 

Next up is a Charlotte Cake:

Traditionally, this raspberry-rific cake is wrapped in Lady Fingers then tied with a bow.  How adorable!!!  I cannot wait to make it that way.  For class we piped the cake batter in a zig zag form and then wrapped lines of cake around the inside cake.  Layers of cake and raspberry mousse.  We topped it off with a raspberry glaze and voila...yummers!

Doing cakes makes me realize that I should probably be taking pics of the insides of these as well.  There is much beauty in checking out each layer...I'll make a point for the remainder of this section to do that ;). 

Sacher Cake:

This is a version of the infamous Sacher Torte famously made by the Sacher Hotel in Austria.  Here we have chocolate cakes made with almond paste in them layered with apricot jam and topped with a chocolate glaze.  This cake goes all the way back to 1832 in the kitchen of an Austrian Prince.  

Even with all it's history I didn't find this to be the bestest cake I've laid upon my tongue.  The real turn off for me was the almond paste in the chocolate cake.  The apricot jam in between layers was quite scrumptious, but too thin of a layer...My version of this would be without the almond paste and much more jam between each layer.

This is what I'm calling my Redemption Cake:

We have to fill & frost a cake every other day and I'm getting better and better each time.  The misery that was my nieces 3rd birthday cake had me doubt whether or not I even actually learned how to properly frost a cake.  While this one still isn't perfect it definitely looks quite passable and I think pretty :)  I flavored the frosting with lemon oil and couldn't stop licking it off my fingers throughout the frosting process...lemon AND buttercream...O-M-G!!!

Our last cake of the week is Tropical Delight:

Here we have coconut and pineapple yummy!  Again, another cake wrapped in a jaconde sponge cake.  I love the jaconde with it's melted chocolate designs imprinted onto it, so cool!  These layers are daquoise cake with mousse, sauteed pineapples, and more mousse...

I think I'm missing a cake here...or I've mixed up one cake for another.  I have learned that waiting a week to attempt to describe these cakes is too long to wait.  I remember making a chocolate hazelnut mousse and I remember making a praline crisp which was a layer of some other cake and I don't know which cake got each piece.  Oh my.  So enjoy these pics and know that their descriptions may not be exact.  Nonetheless nearly each was scrumptious-licious!!!  :)

Love.

Get Comfy, We've Got Some Catching Up To Do...

Ok, let's get started...we completed our exam on breads and moved right into tarts, pies and cakes. In the two weeks since we began we've moved through pies & tarts and now we're just doing cakes. First we learned how to make three different doughs; pate sucree (sweet dough), pate brisee (a standard pie dough) and lastly pate a pate (which I am unable to spell correctly because I cannot add the accents in the proper places. This dough holds up well in high humidity). I don't generally enjoy pies and I tend to only like the filling in tarts because I find these doughs to be dry and boring...until last week anyway. The doughs we made were clean, their texture was perfect and when I ate a piece of tart my plate was empty.

First up we made a basic Apple Tart:

A simple pate sucree with a layer of our apple compote topped with apple slices and baked...pretty simple, and tasty.

Along the same lines we have here a Poached Pear Tart (in the background), an Apricot Tart (which turned out to be my favorite) and a Country Apple Tart (which was an apple tart with a custard filling and some raisins):

Now we enter a section where we've got to start decorating. No longer is it ready to go straight out of the oven:

With this fruit tart we filled the shell with almond cream and baked it off. We then layer on the fruit; strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and mango slices. Chef is talking to us about how movement matters when you're putting together a tart like this and height makes a difference. We made the chocolate curls to put on top and added mint & gold leaf for color and sparkle...who doesn't want sparkle????

This next tart is a Pecan "Ganache" Tart:

Ganache is in quotation marks because it isn't filled with a classic ganache. I'm not sure how to describe this one, it was unlike anything I'd ever tasted. My sister took it to her cheer tryouts and it was loved by adults and teenagers alike so it was definitely a hit.
I really struggled with decorating this one...as you can see. This was only the second tart we decorated and I was feeling extremely insecure about my "artistic" abilities...my vision lacked clarity. Eh, while I'd never decorate anything to look like this again I can let it go.

Oh, so something more savory is what you've been waiting for...well then how about an amazing Onion Tart:

I know, I know, nothing fancy to look at but it was quite delicious. We caramelized these onions for over an hour in olive oil and butter (Chef is french we make everything with butter) in addition to some white wine and thyme. You would need to really like onions to fully enjoy this. Each and every bite is all onion. I love onions and had multiple slices for my lunch on this day.

Did someone say Creme Brulee???

Oh yes, a Creme Brulee Tart!!! I'm pretty sure the base of this tart is an almond cream filled tart shell. We then placed a frozen round of creme brulee on top (which I didn't brulee because it was going to be hours until anyone ate it, so actually its just creme). All the black markings you see on the creme "brulee" is the vanilla which settled to the bottom while freezing. I would have flipped this over but the top isn't a flat surface due to air bubbles which popped during freezing. As strange as this looks it still looks better than the flip side. I'm getting more into my decorating groove here so things will begin looking much more pretty from this point forward...

...savory excluded; this is a Ham & Cheese Torte:

Torte, tart, what's the difference? That's what I wanted to know. Apparently a torte has a top to it. Ahhhh, that makes sense. This was basically a ham and cheese croissant made with inverted pastry puff dough. Yea, we had to go back to making pastry puff dough...that were not a fun two days by any means. I'm going to assume I hadn't had enough of a break between breads and remaking pastry puff because all the same frustrations and irritations kept coming up for me. This torte was quite a mess. The dough barely puffed at all, my butter distribution was probably equivalent to the first time I tried making this stuff, which means it was horrible, and it didn't even get cooked all the way through. That said...I ate about 3/4 of it (not in one sitting, but over the course of a few days).

This beautiful masterpiece is a true Chocolate Ganache Tart:

Underneath the glaze is a disk of chocolate ganache, similar to the creme "brulee". While I think the decorating on this tart is fine, nothing spectacular but definitely nice, Chef disagreed completely. This week in class people had been getting their egos busted left and right. Once people are putting their artistic foot forward everything seems to be extremely personal.
On this tart I had put everything together in a pattern of four, I like even numbers and they are easy for me to work with. Chef comes by and explains to me that odd numbers are actually more catching to the eye and therefore I should focus more on creating that way...sounds good to me. This guy obviously knows what he's talking about and I'm here to learn. That, however, is one single opinion that not everyone shared. One of Chef's jobs is to teach us how to sell our deliciousness. No one is going to want to taste it if it doesn't look pretty, no matter how freakin' amazing it tastes (and they are all amazing by the way). However, my fellow students would get crushed when Chef explained why theirs wouldn't sell well or how they could make it better. I think overall it had been a long week, though it was funny to watch from the outside. That's not nice Shannon....ooops ;)

A classic, Tart Tartaine:

Ok, this one I couldn't wait to write about. This was an entire day long process...I'm not kidding, this took us eight hours to make. OMG is right!!! Very classic French tart. It's basically an upside down apple pie. First we caramelized the apples ourselves, that was awesome!!! Making caramel was fun!!! Then we loaded them into a sautee pan to cook in the caramel. Each of those apples has absorbed a pan full of caramel and is that same caramel color and flavor throughout. These apple slices are jam packed into this sautee pan, no room for anything else and as they cook down and more room becomes available we just kept adding more apple slices. Then we cover the top of the sautee pan with the dough, bake them together until the dough is done and then they hang out in the fridge together until chilled, chilled, chilled. We warmed it up some to get it out of the pan, which explains all the messy caramel on my cake board there, and viola...tart tartaine.
Chef told us, one of the many, stories of how tart tartaine came to be. He said two sisters had been drinking, a lot apparently, and suddenly decided they wanted apple pie. They were so drunk they made the damn thing upside down and that's how it came to be. As we were making this tart I decided there's no way two drunk ladies put that much work into this tart. Not only did it take a lot of hours but was detailed work; making the caramel, fitting all the apples in the pan, again and again, no way. Another chef told us the tale that a woman working at a lodge was called away by a hunter and forgot about her tart and that's how it ended up the way it did. Obviously I'm missing some essential parts to that story because I'm sitting here wondering what's the significance of the lodge and the hunter in that story.
Either way it was sooooooo rich I could only eat a couple of bites. Good? Yes. Super rich? Super yes!!!

Coconut Tart:

This one's pretty simple. Coconut, butter, and...something else which I don't recall at the moment. We all had left over batter and made mini ones. I ate those all weekend long. My friend June tried one and said it was exactly the same as a Filipino dessert she's had before...and I cannot remember the name of that either. Wow, I'm just a bundle of info on this treat.

Chocolate Ganache Tart:

The difference between this one and the previous chocolate ganache tart is that this tart is a shell filled completely with chocolate ganache. I don't know if you've ever eaten straight ganache but it's super rich. I took this to my friend Zeke's house for a dinner he made and I had maybe a half inch slice, possibly a full inch, and could only muster a few bites. It was crazy rich. More so than the Tart Tartaine? Hmmmm??? The tart tartaine was much sweeter while this was a creamier kind of richer. Not sure which was the richer winner.

We're almost caught up to real time...
Crock Apple Tart:

We made a special hazelnut dough for this tart. It was scrumptious!!! So this baby has a hazelnut dough and is filled with a hazelnut chocolate cream and apples which have been cooked down in butter and sugar, then topped with a praline and hazelnut cream mousse and further finished off with that chocolate disk which is an amazing chocolate mixed with a praline butter (like peanut butter). The added praline butter (which isn't what it's actually called) softens the chocolate so that when you cut into this tart the chocolate doesn't snap into a bunch of pieces. It's very pliable and had we actually tempered our chocolate properly you would be able to slice right into it like a normal pie/tart/cake with no breaking. We, all of us in class that is, all heated our chocolate too hot and then laid it out so it never reached a truly workable state and it began to gray and separate. It's really weird to see chocolate separate while still in its solid form.

Lemon!!!!

Growing up my favorite dessert was my grandmother's lemon meringue pie. OMG!!! Lemon is still my favorite dessert flavor and I adore any excuse to put meringue on anything. My newest favorite dessert is a Pavlova which is a large meringue filled with lemon curd and fresh berries topped with whipped cream. Deeee-lish!
So we made this lemon curd which was a different recipe than I've ever used and I think I like it better...why? It was way less ingredients than my recipe and much more rich in lemon flavor and a great consistency (mine always seems to come out too thick). There's no cornstarch in this recipe either which I like :)
I gave my grandmother a slice of this pie and she loved it. Come to find out she never even made lemon curd, just filled that lemon pie up with lemon filling from a can. Eh, I'm pretty sure that through nostalgia alone it will always rank as on of my favorites!

Cakes, cakes, cakes! My love! My nemesis!

When I began taking a cake decorating class a couple of years ago I loved it, and I was good at it! Then a year later I made my nieces birthday cake and was left to wonder if everything I had previously learned had been sucked from my brain and flushed down the toilet. Frosting her birthday cake was the most difficult thing I'd ever done...now I know it was because I did so with a frosting I'd never worked with before. That'll teach me.
In class we're frosting with a buttercream frosting with a....wait for it....OMG you're going to die.....meringue base. Shut up!!! I love it!!! Basically its an Italian meringue; which means we melt the sugar to a certain temperature then slowly add it to the egg whites and whip it until it cools (which basically takes forever) and then add a buttload of butter to it. Wonderful! A) As I've previously shared I love meringue. B) Buttercream frosting, while not as popular as it was in the past is still an American classic...yummers!!! and C)...well I don't have a C but A+B is good enough for me!
And this frosting is so easy for me to work with and I'm getting great practice at frosting cakes. Yea, I need it because Addyson turns two in August and Jada & Tyson are up in December!!!

This next cake I added just because its so different...simple & different:

What's it called? That's an excellent question to which I have no answer :( We made the cake from one recipe and the filling from another and put them together. I did NOT eat any of this cake...my conscious got the best of me. The filling is pastry cream mixed with butter and praline butter...we made it on a Friday, I had spent the entire week feeling guilty about the 10 pounds I've put on since class began and just couldn't bring myself to go there. I did touch it though and once chilled the filling gets hard, as you'd expect with butter, and was very rich!!! For a small cake it packs a lot of punch!

And now....my baby:

It is very uncommon of me to become attached to a cake. Why would I? That would be silly, right? However this cake I absolutely adore.
This was a two day project, somewhat labor intensive. First we made the patterned cake you see on the outside. That was awesome, I had no idea you could pattern a cake like that. First we made a chocolate batter which we stenciled onto a silpat. You could freehand a design as well but one of the gifts I've been given in life is to know my limitations and respect them :) So I stenciled. Then we froze that batter while making the cake batter, which we then spread on top of the hardened chocolate batter. While baking the chocolate melts into the cake and voila...beautiful!
That's the outside. On the inside, layer by layer from the bottom to the top is:Vanilla sponge cake, creme anglaise (which if you're unfamiliar is awesome and basically an ice cream base), bluberries, creme anglaise, sponge cake, a fruit jelly we made with raspberry and blackberry puree, and topped with more creme anglaise. Now just reading that you might be thinking, "wow, that's a lot of creme anglaise and cake. What a heavy cake" and I am here to shock and amaze you. This cake is really light and fresh.

The creme anglaise is whipped with whipping cream in a "soft peak" stage so it isn't dense at all, and all the fruit in its different forms is so flavorful and refreshing in each bite. I am definitely going to make this cake again. It'll be a great summer dessert!

I am loving this new section. First off the pace is much slower than breadmaking which re-affirms for me that while I truly enjoyed breadmaking, desserts are definitely my forte! Friday I came home with three cakes and while we are making a lot in a week and in a day, our schedule allows for us to enjoy breaks and full lunches and be present with each project in front of us, even when we're working on two at a time. It's a completely different world!

Cakes are turning out to be a bit more complex than I'd imagined. I completely understand why someone started putting cake mixes in boxes and selling them, and I understand how they made so much money doing so. We're making these intense cakes which require heating ingredients to certain temperatures before adding them and where before I could just add all the ingredients together into one bowl now everything is sperate and there are warm ingredients and cold ingredients and they can't be mixed together until a certain point and even then they have to be mixed together in a very specific and delicate manner. Holy Hell! And there are plenty more cake types we haven't even touched on yet. (*My apologies for that poorly structured and run on sentence, which I won't be fixing so I can end this blog entry)

I promise to be more updated on my entries...
Be well.