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.!!