Christmas In February

Ho, ho, ho! Joyeux Noel, everyone! That's what I would say if it were actually Christmastime, and if I were being corny. It felt like Christmas last night, thought, as we started our second cake unit, and even though it's the end of February, we made a traditional French Christmas cake, the buche de Noel, or Yule log. Along with that, we started two other cakes, a fraisier (essentially, a fancy strawberry shortcake) and a lemon chiffon cake (a very light lemon cake). I'll get to those next time, when I have pictures, but for now, I'll just talk about the buche.

The thing I kind of love about the buche de Noel, is that, unlike every other French pastry, this one kind of revels in its tackiness. Generally, the more crap you put on it, the more festive. Now, that's not to say that you can't make very elegant Yule logs, such as the gorgeous cakes made by pastry chefs like Francois Payard and Pierre Herme, but in general, there is a certain rusticity to them that I really enjoy.

We made this cake using a biscuit de roulade sponge cake, as a roulade is a cake that gets rolled up. We then filled it with a chestnut buttercream and a tiny bit of cranberry compote. After rolling it up, we covered the whole log in chocolate buttercream. Now, there's no traditional filling on this, but my chef figured chestnuts and cranberry are festive for Christmas. Personally, I think caramel butter cream would've been better, but that's probably because caramel buttercream makes everything better! But I digress. After masking the cake in the chocolate buttercream, we trimmed the cake and used the trimmings to make little branches and whatnot. We gave the frosting a wood-like texture using a fork, and then we decorated the cake with little meringue mushrooms and snowmen. Had we had more time, we could've also made little marzipan decorations, but I'm really happy with how this came out.

Parade Of Petits Fours

Hi all! It's been a while, I know, but I've found it hard to write. Anyway, there's a lot to catch up on, so let's get started. This is the end of the petit four unit, so I'll describe everything from left to right.

On the very left, we have shortbread cookies. We took vanilla shortbread and chocolate shortbread, cut them into little squares, and then "glued" them back together to achieve the checkerboard pattern. We also made swirls. Some people didn't care for these, but I enjoyed their simplicity. To each his own, I suppose.

Next we have the petit four glace, which is probably what comes to mind when you think of petits fours. It's an almond sponge, with a thin layer of apricot jam in the middle and a paper thin layer of marzipan on top. Then, the whole thing gets glazed in pouring fondant. These remind me of Bar Mitzvahs and Oneg Shabbat, and as a kid, they were my absolute favorites. Now...I dunno...now, they're just super sweet and cloying. Perhaps my tastes have matured since the last time I set foot in a synagogue, which was, er, quite a long time ago. Anyway, here's a closeup. Thanks to my partner, Nicole, for the cute designs!

Next toward the center, we have lemon cookies, sandiwiched with raspberry jam, and half-dipped in a chocolate glaze. I'm not sure why these are called lemon cookies, though. There's a bit of lemon zest in the batter, but it hardly has a strong lemon flavor. Oh well, they were a big hit.

In the center, we have one of my favorites, the caramel mou. Mou is French for "soft," although since I overcooked the sugar, they probably should be called "caramel dur," since they were hard as rocks. Oh well, they were fantastic, nonetheless...like a grown-up Tootsie Roll. We topped some with chopped walnut and some with coarse sea salt. Mmmm, salted caramels.

Third from the left is another caramel confection called the Florentine. We poured an almond and orange-flavored caramel over some pate sucree and baked it until it was bubbly. They're pretty good, but I'll still take the caramel mou.

Second from the right are vacherins, meringue "nests", that we filled with passion fruit curd. Meh...this was kind of the throwaway of this particular petit four tray, in my opinion. I guess if you like passion fruit, though....

Finally, we come to the pyramides. Here we took an almond sponge (the same from the petit four glace) and topped it with three different flavors of butter cream: salted caramel, chocolate, and pistachio. These were good, although I feel that the three buttercreams were unnecessary to combine. Not pictured are the domes, which were very similar, except that they had a dome shape and only one type of buttercream. Those were pretty awesome, in my opinion. Here's a close up of the pyramides, by the way:

And here is the tray that Nicole and I put together for our exam. We each were assigned three different petits fours that we had already made during the unit, plus we each had to come up with our own. It was crazy busy, but very rewarding, I think. Check it out!

Nicole made the one in the center. It is, and she can correct me if I'm wrong, a spumoni cake, with joconde sponge, rolled up with pistachio buttercream, and glazed with chocolate. Finally, a little maraschino cherry was put into each slice. It was really tasty, and it looked very cute.

Mine is right next to it, on the left. I made a tart with a shortbread crust, filled with chocolate peanut butter mousse, and topped with a bruleed banana slice. Not to be a braggart, but it elicited a "wow" from my chef, so I was quite happy. Here's a close-up:

All in all, I think both Nicole and I were happy with our results. We'll see when we get the grades, though!

Phew, well, that's it for petits fours. Next up, Cakes II, our final unit of the first half of the entire course...meaning, we're almost halfway done. Jeez! Well, I'll just take some deep breaths and keep on going.

The Little Ovens

Hi all,
We're well into the petit four unit here, so here is our second tray, showing what we made on days 3 and 4 of this unit.

On the left, we have allumettes, or matchsticks. We made a coconut puff pastry and spread royal icing over it before we baked it. To be honest, in the rush of everything, I didn't even get to try these.

Next is a surprise favorite...pate de fruit. Now, when I think of a fruit jelly dessert, I generally think of, at best, Chuckles, which are just ok, and at worst, those nasty jellies you get on Passover, which are gross. So it was such a nice surprise when this turned out to be one of my favorites from the tray! Chef Cynthia had gotten several different fruit purees, and we were allowed to choose what we wanted to make. This is a peach-lychee pate de fruit, or, er, peachee. A definite taste sensation!

Next up we have the nougat. Now, this isn't what you'd find in a Snickers bar, as much as I love a Snickers bar. What defines a nougat is that it contains nuts and honey. We used several different types of nuts, and it came out really well. I think I cooked mine more than I would have liked, as it was really hard. That's not wrong, though, it's just a matter of preference. As in, I prefer not to break my teeth on nougat.

In the middle of the tray is opera cake. Let's just take a minute to appreciate opera cake, in all its glory. You have three super thin layers of hazelnut sponge, filled with ganache and coffee buttercream. Yeah, this one's right up my alley. It's so good I took home all the trimmings. We've been eating smooshed pieces of this cake for days, and it's delicious. I'm only slightly ashamed to admit it!

Third from the right is more coconut puff pastry. This time, my partner Nicole and I decided to do mini vol-au-vents, which we filled with a raspberry jelly. You all know my thoughts on raspberry, so I'll just say that other people really enjoyed it.

Second from the right are Sarah Bernhardt cookies, named for the famed 19th century French actor. If you think they look like a part of the female anatomy, well then, you'd be right. Ah, the French! So witty and ribald! Anyway, the base is an almond macaron, and it's filled with a whipped ganache, glazed in chocolate, so naturally, they're awesome.

And last but not least (well, maybe least), we come to the langues de chats, cat's tongues. These are very thin wafer cookies. While they're quite good in their simplicity, I can't help but think they'd be tastier with some chocolate sandwiched in the middle of them to make Milano cookies. But I've been known to overdo things, from time to time.

Well that's all. Our petit four test is quickly approaching. We have to make three assigned petits fours plus one of our choosing. Yikes.

Tray Up!

Hey everyone. With the bread unit over, I think it's safe to say we've turned a corner in my education. We've reached the almighty petit four unit. A petit four (literally, "little oven") is a dessert that eaten in only one or two bites. It can be almost anything, really, so this unit serves as a review of most of the techniques we've learned thus far. The way this unit works, though, is that we save what we make the first class and add that to what we make the second class, so that we can put together a petit four tray. They call that "traying up."

So, here are the results of days 1 and 2 of petits fours:

I will describe everything from left to right. First up, on the two ends, we have the palets aux raisins. These are very simple, but tasty, raisin cookies. They're glazed with rum, too, and they're actually pretty good!

Next are the almond tuiles. These are very delicate, paper-thin wafers that were flavored with ground almond and orange zest. Pretty good, although they're really fragile and kept shattering as we tried to lay them on the tray. Also, I have to be honest and say that while these are delicious, the appearance of the raw batter kind of turned me off to them. I'll just say that it looks like the result of having way too much fun on a night out...moving on.

Third from the left are the financiers, a very classic French pastry and petit four. It is a cake made with almond meal. We topped ours with pineapple. I have heard a couple stories as to why these are called financiers. The first is that it is simple to eat and doesn't leave crumbs on your suit, and the second, given by our chefs, is that they're cheap, but you can charge a lot for them. The latter sounds more accurate, I think.

Next up we have the drool-worthy chocolate macaron. These are not the macarons that are so trendy these days. These are more of a wafer cookie...crunchy. We sandwiched these together with ganache. They're REALLY good.

Second to last, we have little passion fruit barquettes. A barquette is a tart that is shaped like a boat. Ours are filled with passion fruit curd and topped with fresh blueberries.

Finally, we have the macarons gerbet. These ARE the macarons that are super trendy now, and were almost my undoing. To be fair, they are notoriously tricky to make, and so many things can go wrong with them. For some reason (chef thinks I may have mis-scaled my almond flour), my macarons would not deflate enough, and my dough was therefore very stiff and dry. Seriously, I mixed this dough by hand for a half hour straight and nothing happened! I was...exasperated, to be sure. But, they tasted great, even if they weren't very pretty. The macarons in the picture (courtesy of my partner, Nicole) were colored pink and filled with raspberry jam. However, I brought a bunch home and filled them with Nutella, which my barber raved about. Suck it, raspberries!

Well, there you have it. Next up, we're making Sara Bernhardts, Madeleines, and a whole bunch of other junk. Huzzah!

Bread Time For Brettsky

Well, we've come to the end of the bread unit. You know, it's only been 4 months, and I cannot BELIEVE how much we've already done. When I started this class (I almost said "journey" but quickly remembered I'm not a reality show cliche), the bread unit seemed so far away. And now, I've just finished it. Yeesh! Anyway, here we go!

First we have foccacia. It was fairly simple to make, although I never realized how much oil goes into it! We made ours with half tomato and half rosemary and sea salt. It turned out to be a delicious snack for my friends during a showing of the cinematic masterpiece, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.

Next, we have the soft rolls. As plain and simple as these were, they were really delicious. Plus, we got to knot them into a variety of shapes, which was fun.

We also made English muffins. These were...not my favorite. First off, we fried them before baking them, so they're kind of greasy. They taste good, however...just like Thomas's.

These are the lemon poppyseed muffins.

And last but not least, we have the results of my test for Viennoiserie and breads. I think I did ok on these, but not as well as I would have hoped. Grades aren't in yet, so we'll see! I'd also like to give a shout out to the Purity Wrap in the background. Sure, it's just plastic wrap, but some of us in class can't help but think it's also some crazy Sarah Palinesque, abstinence-only education tool.

Well, aside from a freezer full of bread, that's all I got for now. We started petits fours last class, but I won't have anything to show for that until our next class. Expect financiers, tuiles, palets aux raisins, and much more.