Chocolate Marquise with Cranberry Swirl Ice Cream, and Cranberry Compote

This was really nice. The chocolate marquise disks were incredibly good...sort of a frozen chocolate mousse (but much more complicated to make). The mint creme anglaise and chocolate sauce complimented it perfectly. I'm not sure I liked the cranberry swirl ice cream and cranberry compote with it though. I think that might be a reflection on the cranberries we used, which were a bit bitter, rather than the idea of cranberry with it. Regardless of the taste, it looked really nice with the cranberry compote and the cranberry swirl ice cream.

Creme Caramel and "Yummy" Tuiles

Yum, indeed.

Yesterday we also finished our crèmes caramels. These are kind of like flan...I'm not a huge fan of either. That said, these were nice. We served them with orange and strawberry salad, which was delicious, and tuiles. My partner and I made the tuiles. The chef thought it would be nice to make orange tuiles with chocolate "yum"s written on them. It was not easy to write with the batter and tuiles have to be baked in tiny batches so that you have time to curl them before they harden. But in the end I think they looked pretty great.

Classic Creme Brulee, part 2

Today we finished the crèmes brulées by coating the top of the baked custard with sugar and heating it with a blowtorch. They were amazing! They perfectly crispy on top and cool and creamy inside. Yum!

We served them on top of doilies (as is customary, apparently) and put some raspberries and a sprig of mint on top of them. We served them with shortbread squares. That is atypical...in fact, crèmes brulées are almost never served with cookies of any sort. But the cookies are one of the learning objectives, so the chef decided that we should plate them with the crèmes brulées.

Creme Brulee, part 1

Unfinished, cooked creme brulees.

We started plated desserts today. The unit is a little strange because each team makes some element of a dessert that we will then plate like in a restaurant, so not everyone makes everything, like we usually do. Still it's kind of fun, because it's good practice for working in a restaurant and we get to eat everything we plate. Or at least that's what the chef said...today's class was just preparing different crème caramels and crèmes brulées which we will plate next class. I can't wait!

Reine de Saba (a.k.a. part two of the Chocolate I exam)

Part of our exam was to make a Reine de Saba (or Queen of Sheba) cake and decorate with with tiles made from the chocolate we used for the box. My cake collapsed a bit more than I would have liked. But it tasted wonderful--like a dense, fudgy, chocolate brownie--and I think the glaze looked really pretty and the tiles looked nice (albeit a little too thick).

Chocolate "Brick" a.k.a. Chocolate I Exam

This was a surprise for our chocolate exam. We had to make a closed box, or as I call it a hollow brick, of chocolate. Each side had to have two types of tempered chocolate and it couldn't just be piped on after. We also had to include our initials. Since my initials are MW, I had a lot of fun with them and used a "w" for both--upside-down for the "m," clearly-- so that it had rotational symmetry. I'm not thrilled by mine. The chocolate hardened so fast that it curled too much to quickly for me to put a board on top. That made it really hard to glue everything together and I ended up smudging my dark chocolate "glue" all over the white chocolate stripes. Still it came out pretty well, I think.

Part of the test was to see whether they could stack, like bricks.
The chef called it the wall of fame.

Chocolate Candy Stand

We had two days to make a showpiece out of chocolate to hold the candies we made the class before. It's not easy to do. Aside from the fact that tempering is tedious, the chocolate has to be cut at exactly the right time, kept under a board to harden (so it doesn't curl), and glued together with more tempered chocolate at exactly the right temperature. Plus it melts if you handle it too much, which makes it difficult to assemble. I'm a bit annoyed about how sloppy my butterflies came out, but then again, I'm not great at piping, so I suppose I should be happy with how well they came out. I really like how the flowers looked and the shape of the stand worked so nicely. I think the best part is that the bowl worked so well; it held plenty of candy, didn't tip or wobble, and was sturdy enough not to crack when the candy was piled in.

A close up of the bowl, butterflies and flowers.

Chocolates

Clockwise from top: Rochees, chocolate covered sugared
almonds (in cocoa and powdered sugar), and carees.

Yum, yum, we made chocolate candy! We made three types: orange and almond rochees, chocolate covered sugared almonds, and chocolate carres. The first are little piles of lightly toasted, sugared, slivered almonds and pieces of candied orange peel that have been rolled in tempered milk chocolate. The second are whole almonds, with a coating of cooked (but not quite caramelized) sugar, coated with tempered dark chocolate, and then rolled in cocoa powder or powdered sugar. The carres are a layer of feuilletine (wheat crisps, almost like crumbled wafer cookies) with praline paste and chocolate, sandwiched between thin layers of tempered dark chocolate. All three were amazing! I think the carres were my favorite, but then again I loved the rochees--the orange and milk chocolate was a great combination--and the sugared almonds were incredible on their own, let alone once the chocolate was added.

Chocolate Orange Truffles

These were really, really nice! They are a traditional French truffle, but with a bit of orange liqueur added to the ganache filling. I've made truffles before, but we did two things very differently here. First, we didn't allow the ganache to set fully before shaping it--that way we could pipe it out rather than having to scoop close to 100 truffles by hand. Also we coated them in two layers of tempered chocolate, which is how truffles are traditionally made, but not how I did them at home, mainly because I'd never tempered chocolate at home and a double coat seemed like too much trouble. It is a pain, but worth while because the ganache can expand and crack the chocolate and leak out if there is just one layer.

You may notice that they are a bit rough looking. That's because they are meant to be. Truffles are named after the mushroom by the same name and are meant to look somewhat natural.

Chocolate Box

We made boxes out of tempered chocolate to hold our truffles. They are not terribly easy to make, at least partially because it's difficult to get everything squared up, lined up and glued together so that it actually stays box shaped. The rose is made of modeling chocolate (aka chocolate plastic) which is similar to marzipan in texture. The chocolate leaves are made the same way we made them for the cake.

The box and decorations before I finished putting it together.

Fruit and Nut Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Leaves

The chocolate leaves were fun to make and were one of the main learning objectives of the night, since they were our first application of tempered chocolate. The tempering part remains tedious as ever, but I like making the leaves and I think they look beautiful. The cake itself was a bit tricky to make because it was nearly impossible to not break the emulsion. Ah well, it was worth the work because it came out amazingly. It was almost like a giant brownie with dried cherries and walnuts. I would have preferred no cherries and a different type of nut, but still yum!

Tempering Chocolate

This is not an exciting post. I learned how to temper chocolate today and I tried all three methods successfully! It's not as hard as I was expecting, it's just very tedious. Once I'm a bit more comfortable with it, I may write a how to temper guide. I have a feeling it will be a while before I'm that comfortable with it, so don't expect a guide too soon! Anyway, here's a picture of tempered chocolate:

See what I mean? Not at all exciting.

Cakes 2 Exam

My second cakes exam didn't go quite as well as the first. The written midterm was scheduled to take twice as long as we were told it would take, so I didn't have as much time to work on the cake as I had expected (and I'd timed things out perfectly, so I ended up having to cut back on the number of flowers on the cake). Plus my genoise, which we had made the class before, came out badly (the chef said it wasn't great, but not too terrible either, so that's something). I have no idea what I did wrong--that's not entirely true, I think I overheated the bombe and then allowed the cake to deflate in the confusion over which oven I should be using--but it doesn't really matter. My buttercream was fine, not quite what I would have liked, but not bad by any means. The thing that redeemed the cake was the finishing. My fondant covering, according to the chef, was nearly perfect. My flowers were well made and (while he thought they were arranged slightly awkwardly, since I'd had to make fewer given the time constraints) were a pretty yet simple decoration for the cake. Overall, I'm very happy with how the final product looked but not thrilled with how it tasted. Personally I've always cared more about the taste than looks so this doesn't make me terribly happy. At least this exam was about the appearance more than the taste.

Chocolate Pistachio Roulade

This is an incredible cake. It is a chocolate roulade filled with pistachio mousseline and covered with fondant. I think it would have been better with marzipan on top, but I don't think you can make those flowers look quite as nice in marzipan (because it's a little grainer and less white). The cake was delicious and the filling (while not quite nutty enough) was excellent. What really made this cake incredible is that instead of being a roulade that looks like a log, it looks like a proper cake...until you cut it open...then you realize that it isn't quite proper--the layers are vertical, not horizontal. See:

Practice Cakes

I made this to bring over to a friend's house for a dinner party.
I think a whole, homemade, decorated cake is a nice hostess gift.

Have I mentioned that I love that studying here involves baking cakes?! Anyway for the midterm we have to make a cake. The type of cake, filling, and covering are randomly assigned as sets. I got genoise, buttercream, and fondant. Problematically, we haven't actually used fondant yet. Apparently it's similar to covering a cake with marzipan, but it does have a slightly different texture and needs to be worked with slightly differently. So I bought some fondant to practice with (it's pretty lousy quality, but I figure it approximates what we'll be using), made some genoise, and practiced soft ball sugar (for the buttercream) for the millionth time--and I still overcooked it on my first go. Overall, a pretty successful cake and buttercream. The fondant wasn't terribly easy to work with. I think I made it a little too thick and then it got all wrinkled looking because I had to wrap and store the cakes overnight and apparently this fondant was quite soft. Ah well, it was still nice and good practice. The flowers were fun to make and I'm really happy that I've managed to figure out how to make calla lilies.

My second practice cake. Sorry the colors came out a bit faded.

White Cake with Raspberry Mousseline and Marzipan

This was absolutely amazing! The white cake was like a boxed white cake, but better. This type of white cake is call a high-ratio cake, because of the high ratio of sugar and fat in it. So I think you can imagine why this is so good and sweet and moist. The mousseline was really incredible too. It's a raspberry puree based pastry cream that, once cooled, is whipped with lots of butter to make it light and fluffy. The whole thing was coated in a very thin layer of buttercream (so that the marzipan will stick) and then topped with marzipan (which we made ourselves.) The flavors of the white cake, the raspberry, and the almond worked wonderfully together. Plus it's pretty! This may be my favorite cake that we have made.

Lemon Chiffon Cake

This cake was incredible! The cake itself was a lemon chiffon cake--chiffon cakes are so named because they so smooth. It was filled with lemon curd, which is one of my favorite things ever, and covered with buttercream (that I did a really good job making, if I do say so myself!) The fun part of making this cake is that we got to practicing decorating techniques. We learnt how to do basket weave, swiss dots, and a specific type of lace pattern (I'm forgetting the technical name), so I divided my cake into three sections and  tried to do each pattern. I like the swiss dots, but they are a bit boring. I love the basket weave. It's easier to do than I thought, but still quite difficult (mainly because I do not have a steady hand). The lace wasn't my favorite, but I think if I'd used a smaller icing tip and piped finer squiggles it would have looked nicer.

Basket Weave

Swiss Dots

Lace

Fraisier

Yum! This is a somewhat modernized version of a French classic. You start with a 6in (or whatever size you want, I'd imagine) cake ring lined with acetate. You put a ring of halved strawberries around the bottom edge and then take a 6in round piece of very moist and delicious white cake and squeeze it in the bottom. Now pipe vanilla mousseline (pastry cream enriched with a ton of butter!) on top of the cake and into the gaps between the berries. With a spatula, push it into all the nooks and crannies, put some sliced strawberries in the center and then fill up with mousseline. Top with another layer of cake (cut slightly smaller than 6in diameter so that the edge can be completely covered with mousseline) and spread a very thin layer of mousseline on top. Then (and this is my favorite part) roll out a disc of green tinted marzipan and put it on top of the cake. Decorate with royal icing. It's really a lot of work, but it is worth it! The light sweetness of the vanilla mousseline, the fresh strawberries, the moist cake, and the nutty marzipan are heavenly together. The only problem I have with this cake is that it is deceivingly light and very nearly healthy seeming...well I know how much butter went into that mousseline and I can officially say that there is nothing remotely "lite" about this cake. Ah well, it's worth the time and the calories too!

Buche de Noel

We made a traditional buche de noel with meringue mushrooms (aren't they adorable?!) today. Too bad Christmas is over. We used a very nice white cake that we soaked with orange liqueur. We covered it with chocolate buttercream, rolled it up, cut the ends off (and stuck one on top with a thin straw for support) and piped more buttercream on the outside of the log (with a star tip to get a wood effect.) The chef made the mushroom stems and tops, but we got to assemble them.

Honestly I think that this was slightly too sweet; as I've mentioned I'm not a huge fan of the buttercream we make at school. But overall, it was very good, if only because I've always wanted to make a roulade but have been too nervous to try it. Now I realize how stupid it was of me to be scared to make one (and mess it up, wasting cake and time), they aren't hard at all.

Petit Four Exam

From left to right: Petits Fours Glacée, Pâte de Fruits,
Lemon Cookies, and Chocolate-Mint Cookie Sandwiches.

As I mentioned earlier, I had to make pyramid petits fours glacée, pâte de fruits, and lemon cookies for my exam, plus my chocolate-mint cookie sandwiches. We had 4 hours to complete the exam, which was barely enough to finish. You see the problem is, every petit four I had to make has many steps, all of which need time between them. Also we only get one mixer per two people and much of what I had to make involved a mixer, but I often had to wait for my parter to finish using it. Overall, though, I'm really happy with the outcome. The pyramids came out well, which is great because I was worried about them. I flavored the buttercream for them with coffee, orange, and vanilla. It was wonderfully tasty (especially with the almond cake base and the chocolate glaze), but I feel that the colors didn't pop quite as much as I would have liked. The raspberry pâte de fruits came out incredibly well. The lemon cookies worked too (they'd have been a little better if I'd managed to pipe the cookies more evenly so that I could have paired them up faster, ah well.) My cookies (which I decided to make square shaped) came out pretty well, the ganache was delicious and the cookies were perfectly baked. My one problem is that they looked kind of boring. At least they tasted great! The chef didn't go over the final products with us, but I feel pretty good about what I handed in.