Sunday, March 27, 2011

The Stand

Hey everyone,
Sorry it's been a while since I've posted, but it's been crazy busy and oh so productive. Last week was super stressful, what with our big chocolate project...the chocolate candy stand. This was the practical part of our chocolate test, and it spanned two entire classes to get completed. Our theme for the stand was fairytales. Now, seeing as how I generally shy away from anything that's happy and sappy, I knew I couldn't go with anything Disney. So, I started reading Grimm's Fairy Tales for inspiration, and whoa boy, did I find out a lot. I'm officially fascinated with/horrified by the blatantly anti-Semitic story, "The Jew Among The Thorns." I won't go into the details, but the long and the short of it is that Jews are sneaky and cannot be trusted. Sigh...I guess it's a positive sign that this story has been all but forgotten. Still, though......

Anyway, back to the stand. I ended up picking Cinderella, because I kind of love how dark the Grimm's version is, what with the birds pecking out the step sisters' eyes and whatnot. However, I chose to highlight a more tender moment: Cinderella weeping under her dead mother's tree, wishing "shiver and quiver, little tree.sSilver and gold throw down on me," at which point, the birds (and, like, her mother's spirit, or whatever) send down a beautiful gown and slippers.

So, here's my interpretation:

Thoughts? The elevation is made of three cutouts I designed and cut out of poured dark chocolate, which I brushed with a thin layer of milk chocolate to give the appearance of being wood. The bowl is made out of milk chocolate, using a mold that we all had to use. I made Cinderella by using a cookie cutter, that I basically turned into a mold, and I'm really happy with how she turned out. The slippers are made with a mold I bought, and I brushed them with a little pearlescent powder to give them the appearance of being glass. Inside the bowl are three types of candy we made: Praline squares (carres), chocolate orange rochers, and chocolate covered almonds.

We also made a cake in our last class, kind of our last hurrah with chocolate...for a while, anyway. It's called a Reine de Saba, or Queen of Sheba, and it's essentially a flourless chocolate cake that we glazed and decorated with tempered chocolate "shingles."


And that concludes our first chocolate unit...out of 3, I believe. The next unit is plated desserts, which should be interesting.

In other news...I GOT AN INTERNSHIP! I'm really excited to be joining the team at Chikalicious Dessert Club. If you haven't checked them out, you really should. Their stuff is amazing and really creative. I know I'll be learning a lot in the next few months.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Des Bonbons Au Chocolat

Hey everyone,
I guess haven't posted in a while, but it's because I've been busy taking in all my new surroundings! That's right, I'm finally in Level 2...it's like senior year of high school all over again (without all that adolescent drama, thankfully). Seriously, though, we're in a new kitchen, have new chefs, and the whole pace of the program has changed. While it's definitely slowed down since we're not making 3-4 things per class, the complexity of what we're making has been kicked up a few notches. Only a week ago, I tempered chocolate for the first time...not an easy feat, mind you, and now I'm getting ready to make a stand out of chocolate! Ka-razy!!

And now for a very brief lesson. When working with chocolate, it is important to temper it. While there's a whole lot of chemistry involved in this, the gist is that you need to raise and lower the temperature of the chocolate so that when it sets, it has the five S's (Mom, I could use your punctuation advice on that one): shine, snap, shrinks, smoothness, and sets. If you don't temper it properly, it tends to be soft, streaky, and messy.While not too difficult, it is a little tricky, and dare I say, temperamental. We learned three different methods to temper chocolate: tabling, ice bath, and seeding. Tabling is fun, but very messy, as it requires you to pour chocolate onto a table and cool it by moving it around the table. Ice bath is ok, and it can be a lot quicker, but if you accidentally get even a drop of water in your chocolate, it will seize up. Seeding is by far everyone's favorite in my class, although since it means you add already tempered chocolate to your bowl, it's very possible that you will end up with some left over lumps, or seeds, in your mixture, which then need to be strained.

I have to say...this is turning out to be my favorite unit, by far. I love that it's complex, a bit stressful, but fun. Have I found my "thing?" I'm not sure yet, but I'm just enjoying learning all these new techniques that had seemed so foreign to me only a week ago.

OK, long story short (too late!), let's get into the products!

First we have a delicious chocolate cake, decorated with chocolate leaves. The cake itself was almost brownie-like...dense and moist with added nuts and dried fruits. Clearly, though, the point of making the cake was simply to get practice in glazing a cake and making chocolate leaves. We did that by painting chocolate onto lemon leaves. Once the chocolate set, the leaves easily pulled away leaving a perfect imprint...kinda like a fossil, right?


This led into our first major project: the chocolate box. Let me tell you, this was stressful. As people were assembling their boxes, you could hear a pin drop in the class. Everyone trying to hold their boxes, fill in the seams, keep their chocolate from breaking on them, falling over, etc. We were able to use a variety of designs, but I chose to make it with a wood-grain technique. I also added a pig as decoration, using transfer sheets to create cool design you see. I had the cutter from my Carrie cake, and I figured that since we were filling the boxes with truffles, it was appropriate. Oh yeah, we also made truffles. Orange chocolate truffles, to be exact. Yes, we've been busy in Pastry 2.



Finally, we come to the chocolate bow. I made mine out of white chocolate. Here it is:


Well, that's all for now. Today in class we made some other candies, but I'll include them in my next post, when you see my show piece. That's right, we're already working on show pieces. This one is a chocolate stand with a chocolate bowl that will hold chocolate candies. Oh my!

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Bloody Midterm Madness!

Well, well, well...here we are at last...the midway point in my pastry education. Jeez, I can't believe I'm already halfway done! I've learned an incredible amout of information and technique in the past 4 1/2 months, and I can't believe how much I've improved. Especially on cakes, which used to make me so nervous! It makes me really happy to see that progress. So here I present to you the last few cakes of the second cake unit, along with my midterm "special occasion" cake.

The first cake I have is a Black Forest Cake, or "schwarzwälder kirschtorte," which I clearly enjoy saying. This was a chocolate sponge in three layers. In between the bottom layers, is a layer of creme d'or (chocolate whipped cream) with a cherry compote. The top layer is whipped cream with the cherry compote. It was really good, and I wish I had a picture of the layers, because they were really nice looking.



Next up is a chocolate roulade with pistachio cream. This one was really interesting for a couple of reasons. First, unlike a roulade you normally think of, this was not a log; rather, it looked like a normal cake that swirled in to the middle. Take a look at the picture I have of the layers to see if you can get an idea. Fun!! The other interesting part of this is that we got to work with fondant icing. Now, fondant isn't necessarily the best tasting icing out there (kind of like sweetened sawdust), but it does make for a pretty cake. Plus, you always have a layer of frosting underneath, so you can always just peel the fondant away. Anyway, it was really fun to learn the technique of covering a cake in fondant, and I'm sure that's something that will come in handy in the future. Also, sadly, I didn't get a chance to decorate this in class. We learned several fun techniques, including ribbons and bows, but I ran out of time starting my midterm cake, which I deemed more important. Oh well, at least I got to practice writing on it at home!


Next up is a NY style cheesecake. I'm a huge cheesecake fan, and I'm pretty excited to try this. Hope it's as good as Junior's!


Now, we come to the pièce de resistance...my midterm cake. Now, I know this isn't the nicest cake out there. I know that my writing needs work, and that I should've put a border around the bottom, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that I was actually able to make a neat cake with squared edges. That itself is something I'm really proud of. One would think that it's simple, but for me at least, it took a lot of practice. Anway, here it is, in all its glory...or gory.



For our midterm, we had to make a "special occasion" cake, which is pretty vague. Our only note was that we couldn't do a divorce cake. I had to make a chiffon cake with fruit mousse and buttercream, and as the theme for it, I chose to do a Happy Prom cake taken off the Stephen King story, Carrie. I have a lemon chiffon cake with a cherry mousse and vanilla buttercream. On top, I have a marzipan rose bouquet, dripping with raspberry jam "blood." Around the sides, I have marzipan tiaras and pigs, covered in silver luster dust. I dunno, I thought it was clever, anyway! Here are some other views!



And as a special bonus, here's a picture of my friend Kristie wearing one of my marzipan tiaras. Not pictured: the aftermath when we dumped pig's blood on her and she tried to kill us all with her ESP rage. Good times!



Well, that's about it for now! It's been an amazing and crazy 4 1/2 months in Pastry 1, and I look forward to seeing what our new instructors and kitchen have in store for us. Next up, chocolate!

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Cakes 2: Electric Boogaloo

Well, here we are, in the middle of our second cake unit, which is just crazy, if you ask me. For those of you who were paying attention, I had a bit of trouble with my first cake unit. I found decorating very hard to do, and it was really frustrating. Well, I have to say that this unit is much more relaxed, and I think I really am improving. So that's cool. Well, here we go.

First up, we have the lemon chiffon cake. This cake is a very light American cake. We layered it with a lemon curd filling and covered it with vanilla buttercream. On the sides, we did piped a basket weave decoration. Now, mine looks a little odd, but it's not my fault, I swear. We were supposed to use a special tip designed for making a basket weave, but there turned out to only be 4 of them, so we just used a regular star tip. That's why it looks a little bigger than you would think. Still, I got complimented on my work, which was a huuuuge confidence builder.


Next we have the Fraisier, which is basically a fancy French strawberry shortcake. We used a milk sponge that we filled with fresh strawberries and vanilla mousseline (aka German buttercream) and topped with a thin layer of pale green marzipan. I don't have a picture of it, but it was pretty good! You'll just have to trust me on this one.

The last cake I have today is a white cake filled with peach mousseline and covered with marzipan. First off, the cake itself is absolutely awesome. This is Chef Cynthia's personal recipe, and I know I'll be making it in the future. Also, as much as I love peach, I felt the mousseline detracted from the flavor of the cake. Maybe a thin layer of vanilla would've complemented it more. Nonetheless, it was delicious. And with the marzipan covering the cake, it was really good. I feel like this has been my favorite cake so far! Oh,  and it's a little boring looking, I know. We ran out of time, so we didn't get to decorate the cake. Oh well.


That's it for actual product. We were lucky in that last class, Chef Cynthia gave us a bonus fondant lesson. Our curriculum only provides one class for that, and it's really not enough. So, I think we were all grateful to Chef Cynthia for that. We practiced on styrofoam cake dummies, so I didn't bother with a picture. Tonight's class, though, we'll be doing more fondant, which we're putting on a chocolate roulade, which should be interesting!