The Chef was ill on Thursday so class had to be canceled. So today is the first day of the week for class and so we're a bit behind. This week we began cakes, and unfortunately I got off to a pretty bad start. At least for one plus we got new groups and I like mine.
The first recipe we made was a carrot cake which was simply failure. What's worse is it was my fault. We prepped it all nice and then panned it. I put it in the deck ovens to bake. We were using tall pans so I was fearful that putting them right on the stone would burn the bottoms before the center cooked-the deck ovens heat from the top left, top right, and bottom. So I put our pan on another sheet pan, which is there so that bottoms won't overcook. Unfortunately, that was my error. Without enough heat from the bottom, the center never set even though the outside cooked. We ended with a gooey collapsing center. If it's any redemption, we got a perfectly cooked outer ring, so we salvaged what we could by cutting out the wet parts and just having pieces of carrot cake. It tasted quite good. I didn't take any pictures of this failure. We're going to try again tomorrow so I'll have pictures then.
Our second cake was a chocolate spongecake. I guess from the standpoint that it's a whipped egg cake, it's pretty simple. It's going to just take time and experience to know the proper mixing time and stuff to get "thick ribbons" for example. Our cakes came out alright. We are chilling them to ice with buttercream tomorrow, so no pictures tonight. I'll have pretty ones tomorrow.
The last thing that we made were eclairs. Yes, we made them in the past. Yes, they have nothing to do with cakes-they're custards. We made them because it's on our final and so it was practice. Looking ahead it seems like we're gonna be making it every week the rest of the quarter. These came out very nicely. They were pretty close to perfect I'd say. Our pastry cream was good too. Unfortunatlely I was stupid and refrigerated it, rather than just cool it, so the consistency suffered a bit, but after piping it came out fine. I have no pictures unfortunately just cuz I forgot, so sorry but tonight it's just a wall of text.
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