Second Week @ School

July 29th - 31st 2010

I realised that the Pastries that we are doing in Intermediate required more skills such as piping, masking and of coz decorating the cakes that we made as well. Enough of that, let's take a look @ the goodies I made this week.

On Thursday, I did not get to bring anything home as I was doing mis-en-place for 4 items that I would be making on Friday and Saturday. However, it was not an easy lesson as well. I felt that it was sort of like a revision lesson whereby we had to make English Puff Pastry and Pastry Cream as well as Chocolate Meringue. So there was a lot of rolling, whisking, cooking and piping going on in Kitchen 5. I worked steadily and in pace with Pixie, so the both of us managed to finish rather early and cleaned up fast as well.

On Friday, with Chef Gert, we were making the Gateau Concorde, Tranche Aux Fruits and the preparation of the base for the Saint Honore for Saturday. This is the Tranche Aux Fruits which has a Puff Pastry as the base with Pastry Cream in the middle and topped with fresh fruit. The Puff Pastry was made the previous day, the Full English Puff Pastry, during Chef Karen's Class. I had experience making the the English Puff Pastry during my Basic Patisserie Semester, so things were quite good then I was doing the Puff Pastry. However, I do need to ensure that dough was rested enough so that the puff would raise beautifully when baked. However, when I made the Pastry Cream the previous day, I realised that the texture of the cream was quite runny, so we suspected that the recipe for the Pastry Cream was not the same one as we did when we were in Basic. However, it was kind of too late as we had all done our Pastry Cream, so we had to use them for our Tranche.

I believe the deciding factor for the Tranche would be how you actually place the fruits onto the Tranche for final presentation. So instead of the normal lengthwise presentation, I opted for the diagonal presentation style with a twist which was to do a conversing pattern. So the pattern from the edges would meet in the middle, then in the middle there would be a criss cross bridge of strawberries. Chef Gert expressed that he was confused by the criss crossing of the strawberries in the middle so he would prefer a simple straight pattern from the start to end. However, Chef Joe commented that the Tranche looked really nice and wonderful. So I think when it came to presentation, it all boils down to whether the consumer like what they saw. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 

The second cake which I had produced on Thursday was Gateau Concorde, which is a very sweet and chocolatey cake. The cake was made up of Chocolate Meringue and Chocolate Mousse. We had to make the Chocolate Mousse in class today, however the chocolate meringue disc and the chocolate cigar/tubes were made the previous day. I felt that this was a very rustic cake as the Chocolate Meringue surrounding the cake were broken by hand and were all uneven. As well as those Chocolate tubes placed on top of the cake were the left over pieces from those which we had broken off the ends to be placed, surrounding the cake. Thereafter, the cake was dusted with icing sugar and cocoa powder, tied with the Le Cordon Bleu Ribbon. When Chef Gert came over for the appraisal, he mentioned that my cake looked very rustic. But I replied that this is a very rustic looking cake. However, his expression told me that my cake had a lot of more 'rustic-ness' than the normal rustic looking Gateau Concorde.

But this is a cake which I would loved to look only. As the Chocolate Meringue was made of sugar, the Chocolate Mousse also had sugar in it. So the whole cake was really sweet and after a slice, I felt that my throat was covered in sugar as the chocolate mousse was quite thick. Hence, the sweet chocolatey stasted lingered around for quite a bit. Only after presenting the cake, I realised that I needed some colour as the cake was either brown or white. So I picked up Pixie's strawberry, dusted with a little icing sugar and placed it on the cake for this photo. As Chef Gert was quite big on tradition, hence I did not place the strawberry on the cake when presenting for his marking.

@ the same time in Friday's class, we also did the base with choux paste for the Saint Honore the next day. It was like Basic Practical Test again as we did Pastry Cream yesterday and Choux Paste today. Pixie and me looked @ each other and I knew she was thinking of the same thing as I was thinking.

On Staurday, although I was tired from classes from the past two days and coming in early to volunteer for Chef Karen's Basic Demo Class. Do not get me wrong, I really enjoyed the time which I was helping out @ the Basic Class and I took this chance to realised that I quite like nurturing the next generation of Pastry Chefs. So perhaps, after a couple more years of experience in the industry, I would turn to teaching like what Chef Karen is doing now. Anyway, that's for the future and I need to concentrate on the now.

Again, I did 2 products in class today and during the Demo lesson, I already felt that it would be a challenge. I would be completing the Saint Honore as well as make a Dark Chocolate Tart with Chocolate Base in the Practical Lesson today. Hence, the key to getting all of them done before 10.00pm would be good organisation and fast working pace.

This is the Dark Chocolate Tart, which was so rich yet not so sweet as we used Dark Chocolate for the filling and Dutch Cocoa Powder for the Base. However, the crunchy base with the smooth, pudding like filling and the deep chocolatey taste was so intoxicating that 1 piece of the tart is not enough to satisfy me. I had to have a second piece during the Demo Class. When I was making this in class, I was quite @ home when making the case as it was, again, Basic Practical Test again. As Sweet Paste was one of the Practical Test Question which I had to make, so making this sweet paste was quite fast for me to complete. So off to the oven with the base to be blind baked until almost done. While the base was in the oven, Pixie and me made the Chocolate Filling together as it portion for 1 was quite small and to save time for other jobs, we had decided to make the filling together by one person, while I concentrate on measuring up for the Diplomat Cream as well as start the sugar for caramel. Once the base was cool enough, as if I pour the filling in while the base is hot, the base would absorb the filling thus making the base soggy, I poured in the filling and off to the oven, again, to set the filling.

With that part completed, I was able to proceed to my other tasks. However, @ the end of the lesson, when I was trying to dislodge the chocolate tart from the tart mould, I realised that there were 2 bases in the bottom of the tart mould, which explained why my tart was so soft @ the bottom and I had a hard time removing the 2nd base without cracking my tart. I did try to ask Chef Gert for help with the dislodging of the tart, but he, too, was not confident in doing it without breaking the tart. Hence, to ensure that I do not further destroy my tart, I had to put my tart in the freezer for about 30 minutes before I can dislodge it successfully for presentation. Luckily, the tart firmed up beautifully after being in the freezer for 30 minutes and I managed to get it on the cake board for final presentation. For the final presentation, I dusted the surface with a little icing sugar and made a strawberry half-wheel, a tactic of presentation which I had learnt @ Uccello and I must say that Chef Gert, along with some of my classmates really liked it a lot. Wendy even mentioned that she would remember this little garnish. 

Now comes the difficult part, whereby I needed to put together the Saint Honore. This requires some patience as the Choux Puffs needed to be dipped into Camarel for the crunchy bite and shiny texture on the top. The concern here was not to seriously burn my fingers as Caramel is actually sugar cooked to very high temperature and could easily cause serious damage when accident happens. As a precaution, I prepared a bowl of iced water by the side, just in case Pixie or me need to quickly put our hands into water to reduce the tendency of getting too seriously burnt by the Caramel. Luckily nothing major happened and after about 30 minutes or so, we managed to cover all the Choux Puffs we needed and moved on to getting out Diplomat Cream ready to fill the Choux Puffs as well as to pipe a nice pattern in the middle of the Saint Honore. Diplomat Cream is actually adding whipped cream to Pastry Cream and for the cream to hold it shape after piping, we also added gelatine to the cream. Filling the Choux Puffs were the easy job, however the challenging job was to pipe the pattern into the middle of the Saint Honore. Even after practicing on the chopping board a few times, my piping was still not very good. But due to time constraint, I had to pluck up all my courage and pipe directly onto the Saint Honore. Luckily, it did not look very bad and I could concentrate on making the sprung sugar, which is the ball of golden sugar on top of the cream. However, I did not get the light amber colour which I wanted as I did not really keep an eye on the sugar while it was boiling.

I always thought that sugar boils into Caramel very quickly, however during class yesterdaym I realised that I was wrong. Sugar boils very quickly but to have caramel takes quite a bit of time and you constantly have to keep an eye on it to get the colour you want or else... Another thing is that even when you take the pot off the fire, the sugar still continues to colour, so if you want a lighter colour, you will have to remove it from the fire as soon as there is a tinge of yellow. I also realised that the lighter the colour the more time you have to play and shape the sugar.As the colour gets darker, it will cool faster and makes it harder to handle.

Overall, I am really pleased with the work I did this week and next week, I will be doing plated dessert. I am super looking forward to it and hopefully I would have a good week ahead of me.

Stay tune for more products from Brenda's Patisseire Kitchen.

Take Care....

First Week @ School

July 22nd to 24th 2010

I was super looking forward to the first week of school as I really missed school a lot since the holiday started. At the same time, I also knew that I would have to work much harder this semester as the products that we are going to make will only require more skills than those we did in Basic.

Let's see what did we do for Intermediate Patisserie this week.

On Thursday, we were in class with Chef Karen. We were doing 1 complete cake as well as Mis-En-Place for another cake to be completed the next day, Friday. Gateau Marbre is the cake that we were doing and completing today. Basically it is a Marble Cake covered with Chocolate Ganache. Yummy! Chocolate should be considered the best friend to a girl and when combined with Vanilla is deadly.

This cake was done using the creaming method, whereby soft butter was blended together with sugar to form a pale yellowish mixture. Thereafter, egg and flour were added to form the primary batter for the cake. In order to get the distinctive flavours of Chocolate and Vanilla, the batter was divided into 2 equal portions and flavoured accordingly. The batter would then be baked for close to an hour in the deck oven in Kitchen 5, depending on the size of the cake. Actually, I felt that the cake, not dressed in Chocolate Ganache, looked quite good as well with the contrasting colour of the yellow vanilla and brown chocolate. 

While waiting for the cake to bake and cool, we proceeded to make the Chocolate Ganache required to dress the Gateau Marbre as well as for class the next day. Ganache is a combination of cream, chocolate and butter to form a silky smooth liquid, which flows freely down the cake, covering it in dark shimmer. Really, it looked like dark liquid gold and really appealing to the eye. Well, we must admit that we always buy with our eyes, so the presentation of the cake must always attract consumer's attention before the sales can be made. Once the cake was cooled and the ganache was @ the right temperature to dress the cake, we were off to complete the product. The cake had to be coated twice in order to get a nice shiny coat to the cake. Finally, some crushed almonds were added for colour and the product was completed.

As I brought along the final product to Chef's table for marking, I felt really proud of myself as I had adapted well back into the Kitchen on the first day of school. In addition, Pixie and me worked better with each other now like we had been working with each other since the beginning of time. However, me being me made a change to the presentation that Chef Karen had demo-ed in class. She coated the bottom of the cake with crushed almonds, however I felt that the contrast with the cake board and the almond was not that obvious. Hence, I made the decision to gently sprinkle the crushed almonds on the top of the cake, just covering the top without letting the almonds falling to the sides of the cake. I prefer the strong contrast of the crushed almonds to the dark colour of the chocolate. To my relieve, Chef Karen quite liked the idea and I believed that my grades for this cake was quite good. This is such a good start to the first week of school.

On Day 2 of Class, we've got Chef Gert in Demo and we are doing 2 completed cakes today. Sacher Torte and Roulade, which were a dense chocolate cake and a swiss roll respectively.

We had made the Sacher Torte cake base and the Chocolate Ganache, the previous day in Chef Karen's Practical Class. So we only needed to assemble the cake in class today. Hence, in the beginning of class, we concentrated on getting the Roulade done first.

Basically, we had to make a sponge cake sheet, not too thick so that when it was rolled, we would not end up with a giant cake roll. With the basic ingredients such as eggs, sugar, Vanilla, flour and cornflour added the sponge cake sheet was baked within 10 minutes due to the thin-ness of the cake. Thereafter, we spreaded beautifully made Chantilly Cream onto the sheet and dotted macerated strawberries all over the cream. Just by the look of things, this would be a wonderfully romantic cake, with the cream and strawberries, the only beverage suited would be Champagne. Well, that's for me, however for a traditional afternoon tea, a cup of Latte or Tea would be good as well.

After filling up the cake is completed, we had to delicately roll up the sponge sheet to form the swiss roll shape which required patience as well as dainty fingers. As you did not want to damage the sponge sheet, resulting in a not-so-nice roll when you cut the Roulade up for presentation. Pixie and me opted to place the Roulade into the fridge as there was cream in it, so leaving it in room temperature was not really ideal while we busied ourselves with the other cake of the day.

Once the Roulade is named and safely tucked into the coolness of the fridge, we proceeded to assemble and complete the Sacher Torte, which was the real challenge of the day.

First, we had to remove the crusty surface of the cake which was quite scary for me as it seemed that I might just tear the cake up any moment. Thereafter, the cake was sliced in the middle horizontally into equal pieces, brushed Sacher Torte Punch onto the layers for flavour and spreaded with a thin layer of Apricot Jam, which reminded me a lot of Chef Gert. Throughout the holidays, when I came across Apricot Jam, Chef Gert's image pops into my mind. Anyway, thereafter, we combined the 2 layers together and masked the cake with Chocolate Ganache we prepared yesterday. As we had only did masking once in Basic, so I had a few issues with getting the Ganache smooth and neat around the edges. Luckily, Chef Gert was there and he was really patient to demonstrate to me again, thus soon after I was able to handle the cake properly. A second layer of liquid Ganache was poured over the cake for the smooth and shiny finishing. Now comes the fun part whereby we tempered some white chocolate and proceeded to decorate the cake. This is usually my favourite part as I get to use my creativity and make the cake that I would put up for sales, one day.

Initially, I did not want to put the word 'Sacher' onto the cake as my writing with chocolate was still not good. However, Chef Gert mentioned that if I did not do it, this would not be a traditional Sacher Cake, hence I took the hint and proceeded to write on a piece of white chocolate with dark chocolate ganache. As you can see in the picture, I am still not good @ it and should be practicing more.

Finally, the 2 products for today is done and presented for Chef Gert's marking.

I had cut the Roulade with a slant so that the strawberry and cream would be more visible, hence making it more attractive to the human eye. At the same time, icing sugar was also moderately dusted as well.

As for the Sacher Torte, Chef Gert mentioned that the edges were not smooth and sharp, so that area could be improved for the next Sacher Torte that I will make. The good point was that my white chocolate was tempered correctly and the way I decorated the cake made the cake looked expensive, thus appealing to the consumer's eye.
On Saturday, we've got Chef Gert in the Demo Class with us again and today would be another day with Chocolate. We were making Feuille d'Automne today, which translate into 'Autumn Cake'. The inside of the cake consist of Chocolate Mousse and Almond Meringue and the outside of the cake would be wrapped in a thin sheet of chocolate, with fallen leaves in the wraps. So the main emphasis of the lesson today would be on not getting the chocolate into temper and getting the chocolate sheet in 1 piece to wrap around the cake. 

Hence, Pixie and me had decided that we would complete the chocolate mousse and almond meringue fast, leaving us more time to play with the chocolate so that we can all leave on time today. As we were the last class of the day, so the cleaning ladies had to wait for us to finish before they can wash down the entire kitchen. Therefore, if we delay means that they would be delayed as well. So we definitely have to keep this in mind when we work. Within 90mins, Pixie and me had completed baking the almond meringue, getting the chocolate mousse together and assemble the base of the Feuille d'Automne. Now, we had to deal with the chocolate, which requires strength as we would need to use a metal scraper to scrap long sheets of chocolate from the back of our black baking tray. We had to work really fast as the heat from our hand would melt the chocolate before it can be wrapped around the cake. In addition, I have warm hands, which meant that I had to work even faster than my classmates with cold hands.

Once the wrapping was completed, we proceeded to make chocolate fans to be placed on the top of the cake. This was relatively easy as compared to the long chocolate sheet, but I did not have enough chocolate left, hence, I had to go over to the next class to ask if Susan had extra. Luckily she made 2 trays of chocolate and I also help with making the chocolate fan for her. Hence, I got just enough to cover the top of my cake. Fortunately, Chef Gert had tempered some milk chocolate and we made some chocolate leaves by dipping real leaves we plucked from the school compound. This was really fun and I felt like I was in Chocolate Disneyland when I was coating the back of the leaves with chocolate.

Finally after 1hour of back-breaking work with the scraper and chocolate, my cake was completed and placed onto the Chef's table for marking. Chef Gert expressed that my cake looked good enough to be sold and the leaves were placed very nicely onto the cake. In addition, with the dust of cocoa powder and the contrast of the milk chocolate leaves, the overall presentation of the cake was perfect.

Overall, it was a good week @ school and I really enjoyed working with the chocolate. The downside was that I now have 4 cakes @ home in the fridge with not a lot of people to share them with, so I decided to bring some of the cakes to my workplace for them to sample my work @ school. The other downside was that my uniform was covered in chocolate and I had to deal with them immediately with Vanish Power when I get home. So after the washing is completed, I went to bed @ 2.00am.

Stay tune for next week's goodies.

Take care and see you soon.!!

Today @ La Renaissance Café Patisserie

July 13th 2010

Today Rae and me went to La Renaissance Cafe Patisserie, as this Cafe was recommended by Chef Michael during our Practical Lesson. Hence Una and me went to do some 'research' some time ago. However, I did not take any pictures then, so when I suggested to Rae that perhaps we could go there for some dessert and she was all for the idea, I reminded myself to take pictures of the cakes we would have today. Oh No! I realised that I looked pale in the picture and to make me look worse, my dark eye rings are really obvious. So I will have to start catching some sleep by trying to turn in early @ night.

So what did we have today?

Rae and I, each ordered a cake and decided to have a taste of each others.

Let's look @ Rae's choice first.

Rae decided on my recommendations, which was Larme de Gaugin. This is an exotic tear-drop shaped cake, with a silky and creamy raspberry mousse on the inside, wearing a colourfully marbled almond sponge known as Joconde and decorated with fresh berries.

My first impression of the cake was that it looked very artistic as the tear drop shape is not commonly found and that the sponge surrounding the mousse is very colourful as well.

My first bite into the cake was a bit disappointing, as the bite consisted of mainly the sponge, which was kind of hard as it was kept in a chilled display cabinet. So I guessed the sponge had dried up a bit, causing it to be dry and hard. However, the silky and creamy mousse inside had compensated for the 'not-so-yummy' sponge. The taste was slightly to the 'fruity-sour' side, as the fruits included in this cake are berries and berries will always have a tinge of 'soury-ness' to them. Towards the middle, there was an unexpected taste of sweetness, which was contributed by Raspberry Jam, I think. As the 'soury-ness' was brought down by a subtle sweetness from the jam. This is really one of my favourite cake to have as I really enjoyed the fruity 'soury-ness' of the mousse and if the sponge wasn't so dry/hard, this will be the perfect cake for me on a summer afternoon with a hot cup of Earl Grey Tea.

So what did I have today?

Originally, I wanted to have a nice chocolate cake, but not too rich. However, after recommendations from the counter staff, whereby almost every cake with chocolate were rich and creamy. I had decided on a fruity choice as well.

The yellow and odd-shaped cake caught my attention and made me want to bite into it @ once. Hence, I had decided on the Passion de Pierre, which was also a mousse cake. This is a light creamy mousse cake with a layer of raspberry jam right in the middle of the mousse and encased in a Joconde. The decoration for this cake consisted of Passion Fruit Pulp and a Strawberry Quarter. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed with the way the cake was decorated, which was on the simple and not really artistic side.

But the taste of the cake was fantastic, for me, as I am passionate about Passion fruit and the fragrance of the fruit is intoxicating to me. This cake had a tinge of 'soury-ness' in it but I did not mind this @ all as the fragrance of passion fruit had blocked all my other senses and all I could do was to continue to take bite after bite of the cake until the every last mouthful. Of course, I was sure that the thin layer of Raspberry Jam in the middle of the Passion Fruit Mousse had already enhanced the experience of the cake, rather than overpowering the cake.

However, this cake had the same problem as the Larme de Gaugin, which was the sponge surrounding the mousse was quite hard and dry. Hence, this cake also did not score 100% today. 

Talking about jam, reminded me of Chef Gert and his passion for Apricot Jam. As throughout the lessons in Basic Patisserie, as long as Apricot Jam can be added to the pastry we were making that day. You can trust Chef Gert to add the jam. From then on, every time I see a jug of Apricot Jam, I will be reminded of Chef Gert.

By the way, if Chef Karen is looking @ this blog, could you explain on how to get those patterns on the sponge? Is it a similar method as while we were doing Chocolate, whereby the cocoa butter pattern is placed onto the sponge to get the pattern imprinted onto the sponge?

@ 6.00pm, which was closing time, Rae and me left La Renaissance and made our way home. This visit to the Cafe and having the cakes had made my day sweet + fulfilling...

Stay tuned for more sweets and savouries in the coming week as I will be posting some of my works from school.

Till then, Take Care!!