Wedding Cake

I made my wedding cake last week...



Creamsicle Cake
Orange Vanilla Cake with Grand Marnier Buttercream frosting
Orange Fondant with Brush Embroidered Royal Icing

This is a tasting cake that I decided to cut into instead of destroying the lovely wedding cake.



Aerial View of Cake

My Final: Chocolate Banana Rum Mousse Cake

In a smidgen over 2.5 hours, we were required to construct a chocolate banana rum mousse cake, that consisted of the following components-all required from scratch;

• Chocolate Genoise, cut into 3 layers
• Chocolate mousse, made from Creme Anglaise
• Chocolate band (that is around the cake)
• Chocolate shavings
• Chocolate Sauce
• Stabilized whipped cream
  
• Simple Syrup, made with Rum
• Bananas, of course

I was 2 minutes late delivering my last exam and was determined not to do the same this time. Per Alice Medrich's teachings, I sketched out the final construction of the cake, which was;

• 1 layer of genoise
• Simple Syrup
• Chocolate mousse
• Bananas

This step was repeated once, and the final layer of genoise was placed on top of that. Then one more layer of simple syrup and stabilized whipped cream. For decor, chocolate detail was added.

First, I made the genoise. Then I melted chocolate and spread it over mylar to create the band. When the chocolate settled a bit, I moved the band into an 8" mold and refrigerated it. Then, I made the creme anglaise, reserved 1/2 of it for sauce, and made chocolate mousse. Then, I sliced the cake layers and put the cake together. It really took a while, but I finished with 5 minutes to spare!

This exam encompassed a great deal of what we've learned in class-genoise, mousse, creme anglaise, working with chocolate, and plating. We have one more test before graduation, which is a celebration cake.

Petit Fours - Beautiful Little Cakes

I could not wait to make petit four glaces! They are just the most beautiful desserts, ever. When I moved out to San Francisco (the first time), my friend Jen sent me a box from Neiman Marcus. I never thought that I could create the confections, but I proved myself wrong...





The only thing I would do differently with these is thin out the fondant more.

To construct these lovely little cakes, you need to make an almond sponge, called a joconde in a half sheet pan. Baking time is only about 10 minutes because it's so thin. After the cake is cooled, cut it into thirds. Then, using the jam of your choice, melt and strain, and spread jam over each layer and put one layer over the other. You also need to make and roll out the marzipan and place it over the top layer and cut into circles or squares and trim the sides.

After that, you should place the petit fours on a cake rack and pour the fondant (not the same thing as what is on wedding cakes, this is pronounced fond-ahnt) over the petit fours to cover completely, as what Jennifer is doing. Traditionally petit fours are pastel colors, so I colored mine a light yellow.



I also made chocolate filigree flowers to place atop each petit four.

Chocolate and Sugar

Two of the most stressful classes during this second semester involved things I love to eat-chocolate and candy. One day was devoted to the heating and melding of sugar to create nougat (not my fave), marshmallows (yum), pate de fruit (fruit jellies), and my favorite...SALTED CARAMELS. Actually, the only thing better than salted caramels is chocolate covered salted caramels, but let me tell you, they are a labor of love.

Imagine 7 of us in the kitchen with various stages of boiling sugar, furiously trying to get the sugar to the right temperature without having it crystallize! Then, luckily, I scored some pectin at the beginning of class so I would have time to make the bonus pate de fruit. I've been feeling good about being able to do a bonus each week during the second semester.

Salted Caramels, Not-Quite Set Nougat, and Passion Fruit Pate de Fruit


The next week, we were the fortunate recipients of two classes on chocolate from the Chocolate Master, Alice Medrich. She we made her Tiger Cake, Flourless Chocolate Torte, White Chocolate Souffle, Medaliers, Jasmine infused Truffles and more. For more information on Alice Medrich's cookbooks, click here.

Then it was back to work to temper chocolate ourselves, which is a lot harder than it looks! To temper chocolate, we used Callebaut callets (tempered chocolate bits), brought several ounces to 122 degrees, then started added the seed callaits, bit by bit until the temp dropped to 84. Then we tested for temper. If it was tempered (which mine was not, well it was and then it wasn't), it's snap-worthy and shiny and hardens in 3-5 minutes. Then you bring the chocolate back up to 89 degrees and start playing.

Truly I loved doing filigree work and making beautiful designs. I also enjoyed making medaliers. We also made modeling chocolate from melted chocolate and glucose, and made chocolate roses, which was fun too! Here are some photos.

Chocolate Creations


Chocolate Rose made from Modeling Chocolate


After showing these items to my family and friends, it's clear to me that doing little things with chocolate REALLY impresses people, so I plan to do more of it, and I'll even get my temper right!

Bread Therapy

One of the best things about school is the opportunity to learn many facets of the pastry realm, and possibly the most therapeutic is baking bread.

We made the breads below with dry (instant) active yeast as the leaving agent (as opposed to a barm with levain breads). We baked brioche (basically the creaming method) with a sponge added to it, challah, stolen, and wheat bread. We also baked baguettes. I have since baked Challah and got it right on my first try. I definitely owe it to my heritage-figures that the 2 Jewish girls in class made the prettiest Challahs :)



Brioche a Tete


My Bread Creations

European Cakes

The first semester at school focused on basic technique and the second semester is where we really get to have some fun! European cakes are generally made with a nut sponge or genoise (like the Princess cake above) and are therefore lower in fat than American cakes, but are truly elaborate and beautiful. We started the week tasked with making a Sacher Torte (chocolate almond cake with raspberry jam and chocolate glaze), a Zucherkirsch Torte (japonaise layers with a genoise layer, flavored with Kirsch and dusted with powdered sugar), a Gateau Marjolaine (a hazelnut daquoise with praline and mocha buttercream covered with gananche, and my favorite for bonus, a Princess cake. I was so determined to make the Swedish dessert, that I really hustled, stuck to my plan, and got it done.

The Princess Cake contains 1 layer of genoise, 1 layer of raspberry jam, another layer of genoise, a layer of pastry cream, another layer of genoise and finally stabilized whipped cream shaped like a dome with a thin layer of light green marizpan over the cake and a marzipan rose. I LOVED creating this beautiful cake, and my friend Lisa was the loving recipient of another one I made at home for her birthday!

Swedish Princess Cake


Lisa's Birthday Cake, with a Gold Bow around the cake


What's Inside the Princess Cake


Gateau Marjolaine




Zucherkirsch Torte




Sacher Torte

Plated Desserts

Plating desserts is one of my favorite things to do! I love creating something artistic and beautiful with food and having someone exclaim, "WOW!" before digging their fork in.

When plating desserts, several factors should be considered, including food trends-whether rustic looking is in or more structural/contemporary, the style of the restaurant and the visual and palate preferences of your customers. The contrast wheel of pastry plating illustrates certain texture, flavor, and temperature balances one can achieve on a plate. Chefs should aim for a contrast of delicate vs. robust taste, feel, aroma, and color.

In class we were tasked with creating two plated desserts. The first was assigned to us and the second was our choice. Inspired by my recent trip to Paris, I elected to create a Framboiser, which I constructed with 3 layers of phyllo (5 sheets with melted butter), creme mousselline, raspberries, raspberry sauce, and shaved chocolate. I worked really well in creating this dessert and got so excited when the result of my concept came into fruition.

I think this dish worked because of the contrasts in texture - crunchy phyllo vs. creamy mouselline, tart vs. sweet - raspberries and sweet phyllo and cream, and colors - white and bright pink for the sauce.

Framboisier



The next item was a Pineapple Upside Down Cake. The components of this dish were an individual sized cake with poached pineapples, a pineapple chip, and shaved chocolate. The challenge in this dish was to create something beautiful from a dessert whose flavors I am not that excited about. If I had to do it again, I would have garnished the dessert with the pineapple chip formed into a flower and made it look like a sunflower. One element I was really excited about though was my decision to flavor the creme chantilly with the pineapple poaching liquid. It has the most delicate aroma and flavor and added to the dish.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Thanksgiving Treats

It was a joy to be in sunny Los Angeles over Thanksgiving! I put my newfound pastry skills to good use and was also able to dabble a bit with culinary creativity.

Butternut Squash Soup with Sage infused Olive Oil and Crispy Sage Leaf


I invented this recipe. I roasted butternut squash with olive oil, added non-dairy creamer and chicken stock, pureed all of these ingredients, and ran them through a sieve to make it smooth. Meanwhile, I infused olive oil with fresh sage and fried some pretty sage leaves. YUM!

Now onto dessert...Of course I had to have traditional pumpkin pie (used a combination of recipes, but added some allspice, dried cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, brown sugar, regular sugar, 2 eggs and non dairy cream (Coffee Rich), and of course canned pumpkin puree. I used a short dough, which was great.



I also made a Blueberry Pie, in honor of my brother-in-law, Burton. Burton likes only cherry and blueberry pies. Ask and you shall receive. Shortly I will upload the video from Thanksgiving Day about creating a lattice crust.



Lastly, I made a Lemon Meringue Pie for my dad, who requested it. It is made with Lemon Curd and the Italian Meringue method. It was really good, definitely the sleeper hit!

Puff Pastry

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

The week prior to the holiday was filled with the initially daunting task of creating our own puff pastry. I never thought much about puff pastry except when gorging on mini hot dogs (delicious) or being served salmon en croute at a Bar Mitzvah. However, when we got our list of "deliverables" as I call them on Monday morning, I was definitely intimidated. We had to make a jalousie (strudel), sacrestains (straws), chausson (turnovers), napoleon dessert, bouchees (little nests of puff pastry, palmier cookies, and a pithivier (a frangiapane filled cake). What makes puff pastry such an art form is the attention to detail that is required.

One has to:

• Make a buerrage (a butter mass) to create the flaky layers,
  
• Make a detremps (the dough mass that surrounds the beurrage),
  
• Fold the dough,
  
• Perform another turn (folding the dough again),
  
• Chill the dough for an hour in the freezer
• Do two more turns of the dough
• Roll out the dough
• Chill the dough again
• Fill the dough
• Chill the dough
• Bake the dough

A lot of steps for this one! It's kind of exhausting, but once you get the hang of it, it's not too bad. Here are some of my Puff Pastry products.

Jalousie with Frangipane and Apricot filling


Spinach Chausson and Spinach, Nutmeg filled Bouchees


Lunch of Puff Pastry


Napoleon with Chocolate Pastry Cream


Pithivier

Souffles: The Fancy Omelettes

I have hardly any photos of my week with souffles, mainly because I was in such a rush to complete my class assignments that I didn't have time to take photos. The other reason being that souffles hardly look impressive or beautiful after the first few minutes out of the oven. They actually go from luxurious, proud puffs to sad, wilted eggs in a ramekin :(



Flourless Strawberry Souffles


Out of the oven for like 2 minutes and already sinking...

Truth be told, I hate souffles. My goal for the week was to change my mind about them, and I had 3 chances to change my tune. To me, souffles are another variation of the omelet, which I don't really like anyway. Why waste the calories on a "breakfast" food at dessert? I'd much rather have creme brule or ice cream or a different variation of eggs, cream, butter, and sugar (sometimes throwing flour in the mix, maybe some berries or chocolate, or even better some liquor). But I digress...So, my personal challenge to myself was to actually like souffle, and I accomplished it, with the help of a little pastry cream.

As many readers of this blog know, I've been creaminally challenged. That is, I've had serious issues messing up my pastry cream. Until last Wednesday, when I decided that the only way to conquer my fear was to tackle it head on in the face of performance anxiety. Unbeknownst to me prior to Souffle Week, is that there is actually a type of souffle made with pastry cream. It is the second most stable of the three souffle variations (flourless (least stable), pastry cream (more stable), and roux based (most stable)). Learning this, initially I decided to scrap the pastry cream souffle because we only had to make 2 of 3. However, my inner ambitious nerd overpowered me, and I decided to try to make all 3.

Sorry this is a long post...

Basically, I am kind of inept on Monday nights in class. I am like a deer in headlights, not on my game at all, so when Jennifer gives us the list of the million things we need to accomplish in class by week's end, it's Monday at 9:15 and I've done like 2 things and think I am totally screwed for the week. BUT THEN...something miraculous happens, and by Wednesday I am ready to crank desserts out in high gear. Take souffle week for example. I was only able to make a flourless strawberry souffle and strawberry coulis IN 2 HOURS-that is so lame (and the roux for the roux based chocolate souffle)! But on Wednesday, I made pastry cream, a lemon pastry cream based souffle, finished the chocolate roux based souffle, made a chocolate roulade (thanks for the stabilized whipped cream, Kate) and a sabayon. Side note, sabayon, made with eggs, sugar, and wine) is the yummiest way to drink. Seriously. It is so good. The French make sabayon with muscat wine and the Italians make it with marsala and call it zabaglione. Either way, it's a frothy alcoholic beverage (can be made with cider for the kids) and it's great!

I embraced the souffle challenge and made the YUMMIEST lemon souffle with pastry cream, accomplishing 2 things. 1) I finally made pastry cream successfully (hadn't done it right since week 1) and 2) I learned to like souffle...but only if there's cream in it.

Mini Tarts are SUPER CUTE!

For a party, I created 48 mini tarts - Chocolate Caramel and Peanut Butter Banana.




They were delicious!

Step 1: Make a Pate Sucre or Short Dough

Step 2: Blind bake mini tart shells

Step 3: Melt Sugar

Step 4: Create Caramel sauce

Step 5: Add melted chocolate

Step 6: Pipe into shells

The Things You Can Make With Egg Whites

I am ready to go to bed now, but at the North Beach Citizens award dinner, Mary asked when I was going to update my blog, so here it is... speaking of North Beach Citizens is an amazing organization that assists the homeless obtain permanent housing. Learn more about North Beach Citizens here.

Egg whites are amazing things. Mix them up with twice their weight in sugar, and you have yourself a meringue. There are three types of meringue; French (aka Cold or Common meringue), Swiss, and Italian. French meringue is called a cold meringue because it is prepared cold and then baked, as in meringue cookies. The Swiss meringue method is prepared by whisking the whites and sugar over a bain marie (water bath) until the temperature of the meringue is 140 degrees. Swiss meringues are used to make buttercream (frosting), as are Italian meringues. The Italian preparation requires the addition of sugar syrup to already whipped whites. It is the most stable of the meringue preparations.

In class, we learned how to make daquoise and japonais - flat discs made from a nut meringue, vacherins (meringue nests filled with fool or creme chantilly), meringue cookies, buttercream and French macarons. French macarons are beautiful cookies. They're the lovely sandwich cookies that Miette or any of the boulengeries sell for $1.50. At home, I attempted to make pistachio macarons, but I did not cook them long enough and they fell flat. In class, however, I made almond macarons with grand marnier buttercream. They were amazing. My next attempt with these will be chocolate macarons with the grand marnier buttercream. YUM. Macarons are done when the have a slight crust at the bottom and are shiny and smooth on top.

(taken with my iPhone!!)

Vacherins with Raspberry Fool (fruit puree with whipped cream)
3 8" Dacquoise discs with Meringue decorations and Grand Marnier Buttercream


Meringue Cookies, 12 all same size

For me, Meringue Week was the culmination of the last several weeks of class. Our bonus item, a lemon meringue tart, is comprised of 1) short dough - learned in week 3, 2) lemon curd - a custard, learned in week 4 and 3) meringue - learned this week. Now we're getting somewhere! I love that each skill and each recipes utilizes technique from previous weeks! We're building our skills and recipes. It's also nice to be able to use the egg whites that I saved from all the custard practice!

Not one to let custard dump on my karma...

I bought all the ingredients the Tuesday before class and gave myself 3 hours to complete 3 of the 4 items on our assignment list for class. We aren't allowed to bring anything in from home to count towards our competed items, but practicing is ENCOURAGED.

I cranked out pot de creme, bread pudding, and creme anglaise in two hours, taking pictures so that I would be able to show proof that I could actually make the stuff without having issues. Come the next evening in school, I was able to confidently stride into class on Wednesday evening and crank out: Pot de Creme, Creme Brule, Creme Anglaise, Creme Caramel and Bread Pudding! It was amazing and I was really proud of my work.

Vanilla Pot de Creme



Creme Caramel


Creme Brule


Firing Creme Brule


Cracking Creme Brule - my favorite part!




It taught me a huge lesson too about the benefits of practicing beforehand. So, I know what I will be doing on Tuesday and Thursday nights, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!!!

Sorry for the delay...I was TIRED!

I have kept all 5 readers in suspense and I am sure you are all asking, "What happened on Monday?" Well, the pressure of the kitchen proved to be a little too much for me and I ended up curdling two batches of creme anglaise and not being able to finish the pot de cremes in the oven. As a result, I had to complete all 5 custard elements on Wednesday, and I was in tears during class AND when I got home. It was a disaster. I could not believe that I got so emotional over custard, but I was experiencing bad kitchen karma and felt so disappointed that I couldn't get my custards to work.

Custards are hard to get right because there is a distinct possibility in every batch that the eggs will curdle, leaving you with garbage. And I was so intent on getting it right and completing my tasks, that I was unable to get over my initial failure and move on. We've learned some important lessons in class. 1) Don't kill anyone, 2) Hide your mistakes, and 3) It's just food. You can always start over and you have enough time to get over it.

I am in a Fight with Pastry Cream, Creme Brulee, and Creme Anglaise

Up to this point, I have to say, it's been pretty smooth sailing for the Aspiring Pastry Chef, until this past weekend, when I was tasked with making 1) frittata, 2) banana cream pie, and 3) a bonus item. As a super nerd, I spent at least 5 hours preparing and planning for Saturday's class and studying for our quiz. I had lofty ambitions of making not one, but two bonus items one each of lemon pie and pomegranate frangiapane. I wrote out, step by step, what I needed to do, not accounting for a mishap that screwed up my timing and my groove for the rest of the day.

There is an old cliche, "Don't cry over spilled milk." In pastry school, that more appropriate phrase is "Don't cry over curdled cream." Well I did, at least twice, possibly 3 times, when my pastry cream for the banana cream pie curdled, causing me to make another batch, which didn't have enough corn starch, which means it didn't set the second time, leading to me not being able to make the pie on my own, resulting in tears. (I ended up joining efforts with my classmate Jenn, who had her own disaster with her pie shell, so the two of us turned in 1 item). I have big plans to make another banana cream pie to show the pastry cream who's boss.

That one incident of cream curdling totally set me off and put me over the edge and I was unable to focus after being thrown off. It was really frustrating, and I attempted to get it together to throw in a bonus walnut tart, thanks to the dreamy Bill (the lone male in our class), who helped me get it together. Just when I thought it really couldn't get worse and my bad karma would last only one class came Monday...

Onion and Red Pepper Frittata Tart with Cornmeal Crust

Yolanda and her Eggplant Tarts (Yolanda, thanks for the mini massage on Saturday)

The goods from class, mainly Wendy's who is super awesome at pastry.