Monday, January 31, 2011

Bread Basket

Okeedoke, we have a lot to get through, so here we go:

So, the first thing we have is from last Tuesday was a big deal for me. BAGELS!! I was so excited to get to make these, and I was also quite surprised by how easy they are to make. I mean, not easy, but not nearly the process I though they'd be.I have to say, they turned out pretty well. But, of course, everything tastes better when you've made them yourself, right? It's that taste of achievement. So, as you can see, we dug into them a little early. Dinner was kind of mediocre that night, and our chef had gotten some cream cheese. Could you blame us?


On that same night, we got to make baguettes. Now, FCI baguettes have the reputation of being some of the best in the city, and I have to agree. Whenever we get them in class, they're delicious and happy-making. So, of course, we were excited to make these ourselves. Ours were pretty good, but one of the downsides to our pastry kitchen is that we don't have bread ovens. So, a lot of our breads, baguettes included, don't get quite as crusty as you would like. That being said, the unit has been a great overview of bread-baking.

 The next thing we have are a little hard to see in the picture. They're five grain rolls, made with flax, sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, and oats, and I have to say, I was a little unimpressed. I felt they were kind of dry, and I'm someone who loves multigrain bread. Oh well, maybe the recipe needs a little tweaking for my tastes.


And now we come to the oat bread, another whole grain bread. I thought this one was also a little dry for my tastes...surprising since it has dried milk powder and lard in it. Oops...did you think oat bread was healthy?! Well, it only had a little bit of lard, but still!



Ok, now on to some amazing Danish. I know some of these pictures are hard to see. I accidentally wrapped everything up before I took pictures, and it was too late (and I was too cranky) to open everything back up to take some better pictures. Hopefully, you get a good idea. Anyway, the last danish we made were all made the same way: almond cream, nuts, and raisin, all rolled up into a swirl, but these were different. We were able to take this dough and add different fillings (cream cheese, cherry and blueberry compotes, almond cream, nuts, etc) and make them into a variety of shapes (turnovers, pinwheels, bowties, bear claws, etc). I made most of mine with cream cheese filling and fruit compote, and a few others with almond and pecans. To put it succinctly....they were freaking awesome. Just sayin'.


Another repeat from the Viennoiserie unit were croissants. Oh darn, you mean I get more croissants? Well, these are going to be on our test this week, so it's good that we got a bit of a review. However, instead of manually cutting each piece, we got to use a croissant cutter, a specialized tool that looks like a rolling pin with little cut-outs on it. It certainly makes it easier to cut them, that's for sure. This time, we made almond croissants, ham and cheese croissants, and pains au chocolat...otherwise known as "the next day's breakfast." Go ahead, drool...you're right to be jealous.


 Next up we have the tarte flambee. I'm not sure why this is called a tarte flambee, since nothing is actually flambeed. However, it's baguette dough that has been made into a pizza shape, and then topped with custard, gruyere cheese, caramelized onions, and bacon. Oh man, does that sound good or what?!


And here's my partner, Berfe, enjoying her slice of tarte flambee!


And finally, we come to Saturday's class. We'll start off with the two muffins we made, banana and corn. They were great, but I think the corn muffins would've been better with whole corn kernels and diced jalapenos in them, but they were pretty damn good, nonetheless.



We also made ciabatta breads. Delicious!


We also made pizza dough, which we used in pissaladiere. Ok, I wasn't crazy about this at all! Caramelized onions, nicoise olives, and anchovies?! That's a LOT of flavor. I know it's a classic, but it's not for me.


What I can get behind, however, is sweet potato brioche. Oh yeah! We made ours three ways. One had caramelized shallot and blue cheese, one had a sweet potato custard and pecans, and the third was a craquelin, a Belgian-style brioche that is filled with sugar cubes that had been mascerated in orange (so that you got a little pop of orange sweetness when you bit into it...amazing).



Lastly, we have a flourless chocolate cake that I made at home for Adam's office. I was really happy with how this came out, and it was big hit at the office!


Phew...that's about it, I guess. I have one more class of breads before the exam, and then we go into petits fours. Should be fun!

Monday, January 24, 2011

Taking The Cake/Making That Bread

Ok, so I'm throwing a lot into this entry, since I didn't have a chance to talk about the last couple days of cakes, and we already started with bread.

On our last day of the cake unit, we made two deliciously awesome cakes. A flourless chocolate cake and a chocolate hazelnut mousse cake. The first, the flourless chocolate cake, was surprisingly easy to make, although there were a couple tricky parts to it. First, since there was no flour in it, the structure is highly unstable and therefore, it collapses as it cools. The way we hid that was actually pretty interesting. First, we covered the whole cake in creme d'or (whipped cream and chocolate), and then we covered the whole cake in chocolate meringue sticks. I have to say, the look of this one was really impressive. It looks like a forest, almost. It was a big hit with Adam's office, although I stupidly didn't take a slice for myself to try.

Next up is the chocolate hazelnut mousse cake. It's pretty straightforward. We made a chocolate hazelnut cake that we divided into 5 layers and filled with a chocolate hazelnut mousse. We decorated the outside with chocolate that was melted down, drizzled on a sheet pan and then chilled. It was like a nutella cake!


Next up is the cake we made for our test. I had a rough time with this. I think I need to sit with a cake for a while and just frost it, remove the frosting, and refrost until I get the hang of it. Anyway, it's a plain genoise cake with vanilla buttercream (pate a bombe style, aka French buttercream), filled with raspberry jam, and decorated with rosettes and marzipan roses. We then wrote "happy birthday" on a sugar plaque. As you can see, my writing needs some work. All in all, this was not my best unit, but I have no doubt that I'll be able to figure it out.


Well, that's it for cakes. On Saturday, we started our bread unit, and I was so excited. We made three kinds of breads...a pain de Provence, petits pains, and Irish soda bread.

The pain de Provence was made with a levain, which is sort of a French version of a sourdough starter. Into the dough, we incorporated herbes de Provence and a lot of olives. Seriously, as we wer trying to knead the dough to get the olives in the bread, they kept popping out the other side. It is necessary to put that much in, though, since once the dough rises, there's more space for them to fit. Anyway, we formed two loaves...a batard (literally, bastard, although really it's just a long bread) and a boule (round bread).



We also made petits pains, or little breads. These were like little baguettes, although not as crusty or airy. They were delicious, though, right out of the oven!


Last, we made Irish Soda Bread, which is a quickbread that is kind of a like a big scone. Ours had currants and caraway seeds in it. It was good, although think we could have toned down the caraway. It was too overpowering, if you ask me.

Anyway, that's it. I'm excited to be doing breads again. It's really fun, and on top of it, we manage to get out of class on time, which is a plus.

Monday, January 17, 2011

The Day I Willingly Stuck My Hand Into A Vat Of Boiling Sugar

Hey everyone. So, our first cake unit (out of 3) is winding down. Only one more class before our big test, and I think I've made a lot of progress. Yesterday we made two Austrian cakes, a dobos torte and a sacher torte

So, the first cake we made is called a dobos torte. This is yet another cake that I've never heard of, but it's really interesting and fun to make, so I'm a new fan of the dobos. It has five layers of thin cake, filled with a chocolate rum buttercream. You then take a sixth layer of cake and pour caramel over it. Once the caramel sets a little, you take a knife that has been heating on the stove and cut it into eight wedges. Now, when my partner, Michelle, did this, the knife burst into flames. It was crazy...I believe the quote of the day from her was "um...can I get a little help?!" The other fun part of the dobos torte was in making the buttercream, which involves heating sugar to "soft ball" stage, or 238 degrees. Now, normally when you test the sugar, you dip a spoon into the sugar and drop it into an ice bath, but there is another way. You can numb your hands in the ice bath, reach into the boiling pot to grab some sugar, and dunk your hand back into the ice bath. I've always been terrified to try this (can you imagine why?) but I finally got the nerve to do it. And you know what? It was perfectly fine. No burns or anything! So, yeah, I got to be a badass for like five minutes. Go me. Anyway, here's the final product:


Next up was the sacher torte, a cake that apparently no one likes...but it's very famous and classic, so what do I know? It's essentially a dense chocolate cake filled and glazed with apricot preserves and a final glaze of chocolate over it. Personally, I'm not a fan of chocolate and citrus, and if the other people in my class can be any sort of statistical sample, then most people aren't fans, either. But, it looks pretty, and we got to practice writing on it, so there it is...here's a picture.
Well, that's it. Next class is a flourless chocolate cake and a hazelnut chocolate cake, and that's it for Cakes 1!

Friday, January 14, 2011

Cake Madness!

Ok, this cake unit is really intense. We are making so much, it's almost hard to keep up and even harder to carry everything home!

Tuesday night we made a fruit miroir and a white and dark chocolate mousse cake. The miroir is a really cool looking cake that is also the cover of our textbook. It's made with jaconde cake, layered with raspberry jam, which then is sliced and placed on the side of a cake ring. It has a genoise base that is then filled in completely with a cassis (black currant) mousse. I was so excited to make it. Mine came out pretty well, I think.


And here's the cover of the book, for comparison:

Ok, so mine's not perfect, but considering it was my first try, I think I did a great job!

The next cake we made was the mousse cake. Now, it's supposed to have layers of white and dark chocolate, so that when you cut into it, it looks like a chessboard. That being said, it was snowing like crazy, and we wanted to get out of there, so our mousse didn't really set up enough in the fridge. It was a bit of a mess, although I'm sure the cake will taste good! The outside of the cake is made with a biscuit aux amandes with chocolate pate a cornet polka dots used to make a pattern. Pretty cool, huh?

The last thing we made on Tuesday was the Charlotte Royale. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much in the way of taste with this one, since it's a very simple cake. It definitely looks cool (we call it the "brain cake."), but the ingredients are all very mild-tasting. However, I was pleasantly surprised...it was really good! Very light, and it would be good for a summer dessert. It has jaconde cake that has been rolled up with a bit of apricot jam and molded into a bowl and then filled with Bavarian cream.

The other stuff we made last night were a lot more simple and a lot more American. We made chocolate cupcakes that we decorated with marzipan roses (I was especially happy with the way my roses came out).


We also made a carrot cake. We ran out of time last night, and our instructor told us to make the marzipan carrots at home, so I did that this morning!


The final item we made was a coffee cake with pecan crumb topping. I have to say I was dissapointed with the way this turned out. I thought the cake could have been sweeter, and I think I would have preferred a more cinnamony cake, as opposed to the nuts. Oh well, now that I have the recipe, I can tweak it as I see fit.

Jeez, that's a lot of cake! It was so hard to get all this stuff home last night that my friend Michelle and I ended up having to take a cab back to Queens. And then I had to try to fit all this cake into my tiny NYC fridge...ugh.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Cake Walk

What a difference a day makes! I was feeling fairly frustrated with the cake unit. It felt very rushed, and I didn't feel I had the time I needed to get a grasp on these techniques. However, we were able to catch up yesterday, and right now I'm feeling a lot more confident about my cake making skills.

Well, we made one Hell of a cake yesterday. It's called a Marjolaine, and it's not messing around with anyone. It has a gazillion different components, and it looks like a big candy bar. It's got a ton of flavor, too. The Marjolaine is a layer cake, and each layer is something different. From the bottom to the top, it has chocolate genoise soaked in frangelico, ganache, creme d'or (whipped ganache), dacquoise, hazelnut praline buttercream, dacquoise, whipped cream, dacquoise. Then, the whole thing is coated in more praline buttercream and then generously covered in dark chocolate glaze. INTENSE! Don't ask me for a slice, because I don't think I could recreate this masterpiece at home if I tried. Not to mention it's the kind of thing that dirties every dish and utensil in the kitchen. That being said, it was delicious, and Adam might love it more than he loves me. So, here is the full cake, decorated with crushed praline:


And here is a cross section of cake. Do you see all the individual layers?


The other major item we made was a Charlotte Russe. Charlotte is a name given to any molded dessert, so this one is a Russian charlotte. It's supposed to resemble a Russian fur hat, which...I guess. Anyway, this dessert is made of lady fingers on the sides and bottom, forming a sort of bowl. That was then filled in with peach Bavarian cream and decorated with peaches and whipped cream. I'm giving this one to my super...maybe it will grease the wheels in getting some things taken care of around the apartment. Whatever it takes, I guess!


Well that's about it for yesterday. I'm looking forward to our next class. We're going to unmold and put the finishing touches on our Charlotte Royale (aka, the "brain cake") and also do our fruit miroir. The fruit miroir is a dessert featured on the cover of our textbook. Everyone in class has been drooling over that one since we first saw the book! Can't wait!

Friday, January 7, 2011

Let Them Make Cake

Well, everyone, we've made it this far...Cakes 1, the first of two cake units that we tackle, and let me say, this one's a doozy. We're making a ton, and it's super busy, which is slightly problematic in that we don't have time to complete everything...but here we go.

I'm not going to go in any particular order, since it's just been a hodgepodge, anyway. Plus, I don't have all the pictures...whoops! In general, though, this unit is teaching us not just to bake a cake, but to slice layers, frost, and decorate. It's a lot of new technique, and while some people love it, I think cake decorating comes harder to me, and I just wish I had more time to perfect my skills. Yes, yes, I'll stop whining.

The first cake we have is a chocolate genoise cake with ganache, chocolate glaze and candied rose petals. Genoise is the most basic, traditional French sponge cake. It's pretty dry, so it's almost always soaked in some sort of syrup or liqueur, in this case, rum. I really liked this cake. Plus, edible flowers are always cool!


We also made a regular genoise with raspberry jam filling and a plain butter cream. I thought this one was a little boring, but it went over well. I'm really glad to be making a real butter cream now, with eggs. I had always been scared of working with egg before, but now that I know how to cook the eggs properly, I have definitely conquered that fear.

The other cake we made that I have a picture for is pound cake. It's pretty basic and simple, but I liked that we made them into cupcakes. Perfect with some freshly whipped cream and berries.

The other two cakes we've made were the angel food and the dacquoise. I had never had dacquoise before. It has baked meringue discs layered with coffee butter cream. The butter cream was delicious, but I think the cake was just too sweet for me. The angel food cake was angel food cake. To paraphrase my friend, Kristie (shout out!), this must be what angels taste like...sugary and vapid.

Well, that's what we've completed so far. We are behind in this unit, so we still have a couple cakes that are almost completed. I imagine I'll have a glut of cakes on Saturday...perfect, since it's a lot harder to get rid of this stuff on the weekends.