04/26-7/10 - Class - Tortes Week 3

This week we prepared three cakes. The cakes are now considered "specialty cakes" which are more in-depth, have more parts, and more decoration so they're some more work, but look nicer.

The first cake was a Raspberry Creme Brulee Macaraon. It is two discs of piped colored macaroon dough sandwiching a raspberry flavored creme brulee and whole raspberries and then finished with some decoration. The macaroons broke a little but otherwise it looks nice.

The second torte was called a Le Fraisier. It is a layer of genoise, then whole strawberries that are then surrounded by mousseline pastry cream. Another genoise layer tops that, some more pastry cream, and then it is topped with a layer of marzipan colored with green colored chocolate spray. Three holes are then filled with strawberry coulis. Very artsy.

The third torte was the one that I worked on, a Fresh Fruit Charlotte. It is a round base of ladyfinger sponge and then a ring of ladyfingers around the perimeter. Next comes diplomat cream, a kind of pastry cream. Then is a disc of frozen berry compote, more diplomat cream, a disc of frozen lemon cremeaux, and topped with more diplomat cream. It is then topped with fresh berries, glazed, and finished with powdered sugar. A lot of components and a good amount of work, but I think it came out pretty well.

04/22-3/10 - Class - Bread Week 2

Bit of a gap in posting, since I had a week off of classes due to my instructor's personal stuff, but picking up where I left off...

This week in our bread class we were able to do a lot more. The chef had the preferments ready for us on Thursday so we were able to bake those and do the preferments for Friday, so we could bake both days.

Thursday went very well. Our first bread was white pan bread, similar to what you'd find in the store. I think it came out really beautifully, soft, and really reminiscent of stuff you'd get in the store, without all those chemicals and other ingredients that have no place in bread (or any food).
Next was egg bread, an enriched bread. It was a really soft bread and came out pretty nicely. It could have proofed a little longer though, it didn't get as much rise as it probably should have.
The final bread on Thursday was country bread. It is a pretty simple rustic bread, and I guess something that we're going to be baking several times this quarter, each time shaping it differently. This time was in an Auvergnat shape.

Friday didn't go quite as well. However it was no fault of my own or my group's but simply a matter of time. We only get about four hours in a class and that seriously rushes some bread. We have to cut down on fermenting, resting, and proofing times just to be able to have a finished product and that can really hurt the product. Case in point: this week we made San Francisco sourdough that was a failure, it wasn't even really edible because there was no rise to it. It called for a three hour ferment and a 12-16 hour refrigerated proof and those had to be cut down to about 1-2 hours each, which pretty much ruined the recipe. We were to also made a 100% whole grain bread but that also didn't have enough time. At least for that we froze it after the shaping, prior to proofing. So we're going to see if next week we can proof and bake it and achieve good results, so that remains to be seen.

We did get two products out today, however. One was Pain de Beaucaire, which despite the name is a pretty basic sourdough based on the recipe. Perhaps it's supposed to be unique due to an odd shaping, but again that didn't really work out too well. Since we had to cut down on fermenting and proofing, it didn't rise a whole lot, but at least this one was serviceable enough to be eaten.
The second bread that we were able to get out was called Mountain Bread, pretty much just a rye bread shaped into a ring or crown. The dough was too wet due to insufficient fermenting and proofing time so we could only do a ring shape, and the rise was only average at best, but it came out at least.

I guess next week the chef is going to try to rearrange the class a little bit so that the bread can get sufficient rest time, perhaps giving most the breads an overnight ferment so that they only need to proof and bake the next day instead of trying to do full recipes in one day, each day.

04/12-13/10 - Class - Cakes and Tortes

Week two of cakes and tortes. We made four more this week.

The first was a Concord Cake. It is two sheets of baked meringue and filled with Concord cream, and then surrounded by logs of meringue and topped with some more and then powdered sugar. It looks nice, not sure about taste though. I tried a bit of the meringue, it had a very chewy feel, like it sticks in your teeth.

Next was a Zebra Torte. It's kinda interesting. Its center is a roulade, a cake baked very thin and soft so that it gets rolled up like a big jelly roll, covered with buttercream. That is sandwiched by two thin layers of chiffon and iced with more buttercream. It gives a nice effect when you cut it, since you see vertical layers like zebra stripes.

Third was a Black Forest Cake. It's pretty simple, layers of chocolate chiffon, filled with cherry cream and brandied cherries, and covered with chocolate buttercream. My group member forgot to fill it with cherries however, but I don't think that's a terrible loss. The brandied cherries were really strong, I think they would really retract from the flavor when you took a bite out of one.

The last cake, the one that I made, was a Sacher Torte. It is pretty simple and very bland. It's just an almond flavored chiffon cake, filled with apricot jam, and then coated with chocolate glaze and has "Sacher" piped on it. I recall that we made this in the Intro to Baking and Pastry class, and it was pretty bad. Very dense and dry. I really coated my cakes with simple syrup to try to give it at least a little moisture, but even with that, it's a pretty lame cake.

04/08-9/10 - Class - Week 1 Breads

My second baking class this quarter is Artisan Breads and I can already tell it's going to be a great class. Bread baking is probably my favorite kind and I have a good group.

This week we made three simple breads: baguettes, ciabatta, and focaccia. All were pretty easy and all went well. We made the preferments on Thursday and then baked them on Friday. In the future we'll have preferments prepared for us on Thursday so we'll be able to do more recipes per week.

04/05-6-10 - Class - Tortes: Week 1

And so begins my final quarter in culinary school. The first class that I am taking this quarter is European Cakes and Tortes. I don't think that there are specific topics through this quarter like there have been in previous classes, just more tortes after another, so I can't really categorize the weeks. Whatever. Since there is so much to these items, I can't really work on every recipe like I had in previous classes but rather each person takes a recipe and for the most part does it themselves.

We began with four items this week. First up is an Opera cake. It is a thin cake layered with coffee flavored buttercream and topped with a thin layer of coating chocolate. Looks alright. I'm not the one who did the terrible piping on top by the way.

Next was tiramisu. I don't really know much of what went into it, as I didn't make it (I'd never make something so rough and messy and call it a final product). I know it's rimmed with ladyfingers and I think the layers are the same, but don't know what it's filled with. It looks like some kind of buttercream.

Third is a Pithivier, which I guess is a very classic, well known European cake, which the chef says also tastes very bland. I helped make some of it, particularly the filling, which is a mix of pastry cream and almond cream. I for one wouldn't really call it a cake, it is just puff pastry filled with that stuff, more like a big pastry to me.

The final item is the one that I worked on, the St. Honore cake. Like the previous, I wouldn't really consider it a cake. It is a puff pastry base with pate a choux piped around the edges and a spiral inside. It is then topped with more pastry puffs crowned with caramelized sugar. The puffs are filled with Creme Chiboust, which is pretty much Italian buttercream with rum and a few other ingredients. The same fills the inside of the cake. Creme chanantilly is then piped on the center. I guess it's supposed to look like a crown. Kinda lame to me.

03/25/10 - Class - Viennese Table

Between last week and this week, each student had to make three petit fours to go with their wedding cake and to create sort of a mini-Viennese Table. I decided to complement my Mario themed wedding cake with pastries dedicated to Glorious Nippon. It's nice having free reign and access to ingredients you can't cheaply/easily get on your own.

The petit fours went okay. I made four types: Green Tea Petit Fours Glace, Matcha and Azuki Cake Rolls, Azuki Butter Cookies, and Melon Bread. The green tea petit fours were a little too big so they didn't present as well as I had hoped. The azuki paste was a bit of a pain. First, they didn't have azuki paste, so I had to make my own. Second, they didn't have azuki beans so I had to use red kidney beans. Third, I was given dry beans so I had to do it all at home ahead of time. I didn't have the patience to cook it to a full paste so it was kinda chunky, which hurt the presentation a bit I feel.

Overall I think they turned out pretty well. However it was kinda ruined when I found out that we weren't allowed to keep our cakes. That pretty much killed my ambition at the end of the class. At least I didn't find out until I had already made and presented everything.

03/22/10 - Class - Sugar Showpiece

This week we finished our Chocolate and Confectionery class with a final sugar showpiece. It went pretty well. The work was a lot more cohesive than last week's and it came together fairly easily. I think I liked last week's showpiece more however. I made the solid pieces-the two colored rectangles for the base as well as the clear/colored shapes making up the majority of the piece. The center of the flower was blown with pulled petals and the ribbon was pulled as well.