1. Coulis assortis - Strawberry coulis
2. Gratin de fruits - Fruit gratin
3. Tarte soufflé - Soufflé tart
4. Soufflé chaud Rothschild - Warm Kirsch flavoured soufflé
I absolutely loved the fruit gratin. It's such a light dessert and I thought it accompanied the tarte soufflé nicely. Here is what was done in demo.
Tarte soufflé with coulis
Fruit gratin
Soufflé chaud Rothschild
I think I'll go right into the pictures of mine because I don't have much to say about this practical class. I thought it was pretty simple and quite delicious. It's the only time that I really had to stop myself from eating any more of it. The cream and the fresh fruit in the gratin were so refreshing, I really couldn't stop. This was definitely my favourite dessert we've made.
Chef didn't have much to say about my desserts, but that is actually a good thing. They say "We are French, if we say nothing, it is good!" The only comment that was made was to go less on the vanilla extract in the cream but that was part of the recipe rather than my error. My own personal comments on my products were that I could have used the torch on the cream a little bit more and made it slightly darker and I could have poured in more of the coulis, but overall I think I did a really good job on this one. Happy girl!
So the following day was dedicated to the Gâteau Basque! This is another cake filled with almond paste. It was a fun cake because we got to try our hand at molding marzipan again!
Lesson 15 was on:
1. Gâteau Basque
2. Cake au citron - Lemon cake
3. Travail de la pate d'amandes - working with almond paste
Chef Arnaud showed us the Gâteau Basque and Cake au citron. Then we had Chef Hervé come in to show us how to mold little fruits and animals from almond paste.
Gâteau Basque
Chef's beautiful rose
Cake au Citron
Chef's cute little marzipan figures!
I have a lot of work to do on making the marzipan rose but I think my marzipan animals were really cute. They were so fun to make too! Unfortunately I found out the hard way that I have a bit of an allergic reaction to the almond paste, could be from the oils in it. We work the almond paste in our hands, rolling and stretching and kneading and it seems that I get a terrible red rash all over my hands when I have to touch the stuff. It's red and itchy for about a day, very uncomfortable. I think I may use gloves the next time around!
My beautiful Gâteau Basque and rose (although as you can see, the rose needs work)
Here are my cute little figures, I love my elephant and my froggie! Actually, the grapes are quite ingenious too!
This was a really fun class because we made the animals and fruit the class before but we actually got to use the airbrush gun to airbrush the colour onto our figures. It takes a little bit of practice to get the right pressure on the gun so that you have a nice even colour.
I had fairly good feedback from the chefs on my Gâteau Basque and my figures, but like I said, I definitely need to work on my rose!
I was really looking forward to lesson 16 because we were making crème brûlée. I have been wanting to make crème brûlée for years but have been too afraid to try it. I'm not really sure why, it's actually not that hard to make, it's just a dessert that is a little finicky.
We had another jam-packed demo class
1. Soufflé glacé Montmorency - Frozen soufflé Montmorency
2. Crème glacée vanille - Vanilla ice cream
3. Sorbet aux framboises - Raspberry sorbet
4. Crème renversée au caramel - Reversed caramel cream
5. Crème brûlée
This was a tough demo for our chef because it's been so hot in Ottawa and the frozen desserts were beginning to melt before he could even present them. They still tasted amazing though!
Soufflé glacé Montmorency
Crème glacée vanille
Sorbet aux framboises
Crème renversée au caramel and Crème brûlée
All I can say about this demo is that the vanilla ice cream and the crème brûlée were amazing. The flavour of the ice cream was fantastic.
The practical could have been a huge disaster, but I'm thankful that my desserts were at least presentable. The problems started with putting them into the oven. In order for the desserts to bake evenly, you have to set them in a steel tray filled with water. This is the difficult part as you have to be very careful not to get any water into the dishes or they will never set. I made a few dishes of the crème brûlée but I believe a splash of water may have gotten into one or two of them. Emily and I were baking our dishes together and it looked like they were ready to come out of the oven. Unfortunately, this was our error in judgement as we plated our desserts and they were definitely undercooked. They still tasted good though!!
Crème renversée au caramel
Crème brûlée
I was pretty disappointed that my desserts didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but now I know for next time. I personally liked the colour on my crème brûlée but Chef said he would have preferred it a little darker. That part is fun though, getting to use the torch!
Okay, so our next dessert was simply amazing. If you're a chocolate lover, this is definitely the dessert for you!
Pavé du Roy
After a busy morning of Soufflés' and Crème brûlées' we moved into lesson 17.
1. Pavé du Roy - Chocolate Cake
2. Entrements Casino - Dessert with bavaroise and raspberries
Pavé du Roy
I think this cake was my favourite we made through all of Basic. It has three layers of chocolate jaconde biscuit brushed with rum syrup and a dark chocolate ganache layered between each biscuit and another layer of ganache on top.
Entremets Casino
The Entremets Casino cake is made out of a rolled biscuit with raspberry jam in the middle that line a ring and then is filled with a pear bavaroise (Bavarian cream). It's then covered with a round piece of biscuit to cover, allowed to set in the freezer, then flipped over which shows the beautiful rolled biscuits. Chef then covered the cake with clear glaze. Chef says that customers are usually drawn more to desserts that look shiny. The cake looked pretty but I wasn’t quite impressed by the taste of it. Luckily we didn't have to make this one in class.
We had Chef Hervé for our practical class, he is so talented and very patient. We don't have him for practical's very often, but I really enjoy it when he does teach us. He likes to joke around and I feel I learn a lot from him. He helped him a lot with the design on top of the cake. I had a lot of trouble with this and also making the chocolate cigarettes, but he showed me how to do it properly.
When it came to my evaluation on my Pavé du Roy, Chef told me that I was getting better on my organization and the taste of my cake was what he was looking for. He said it was a very nice presentation but I needed to cut the sides straight at 90 degrees and I needed to add more rum syrup. Unlike my Black Forest cake I actually used all of the syrup, but I was surprised when Chef told me I actually should have doubled the syrup recipe. The only other advice Chef gave me was to be more confident in myself and in my work.
It took me everything I had not to eat this entire cake. I ate some of the scraps, but managed to keep the rest of the cake whole. I raced home (as best I could on the bus) and gave the cake straight to my landlady. I couldn't look at that cake anymore, it was way too tempting! At least my landlady and her sister got to enjoy it!
I can't say I quite enjoyed Lesson 18. The demo looked great and I was really looking forward to the practical, but to be quite honest, I should have just stayed home the day of the practical. It was nothing short of a nightmare. Worst day of the entire Term!
Let's start with Chef's demo:
1. Entremets aux poires - Genoise sponge cake with pears
2. Charlotte aux poires, coulis de framboise - Pear Charlotte with raspberry coulis
Entremets aux poires
Isn't this so beautiful?! I only wish I could pipe like this, I think this is incredible.
Charlotte aux poires, coulis de framboises
So this little bundle of agony...
I arrived to my practical ready and excited to make this frozen delight. I got started right away making my lady fingers and they were all straight and roughly the same size, which has been somewhat of a challenge for me. After you pipe the ladyfingers, you are supposed to lightly dust them with two coatings of icing sugar. This is where everything began to go wrong. To do the dusting, we have a little shaker (similar to a salt shaker but much larger) I did the first layer of dusting but when I went to do the second, the top of the shaker popped off and dumped the entire contents of icing sugar right onto all of my ladyfingers. I was so upset! I had no idea what to do, I didn't really have time to throw them out and start over. I called over Chef and he burst out laughing. His next words to me were little comfort..."Shit happens." He managed to help me dump the excess icing sugar off and we salvaged most of the ladyfingers. I put them in the oven and hoped for the best.
I tried moving on from my initial disaster until I heard Chef yell from across the room that my ladyfingers were beginning to burn in the oven. They were only in the oven for 7 minutes! How could they be burning?! I ran over and sure enough, they were a dark brown and slightly crispy. Nothing I could do about that, so I took them out and had to use them. I could tell I was starting to fall behind in time, I tried to pick up the pace. I needed something from my knife kit, it was sitting on a shelf and when I pulled it down, down came a surprise. Along with my knife kit came a black box filled with salt, pepper and peppercorns. As was my luck for that day, the box flew open and a huge cloud of pepper blew into my face. There was salt and pepper corns all over the floor and I was not only covered in sweat, but now covered in a thick layer of pepper as well. Chef came over and big surprise, he was laughing hysterically and handed me a broom. I begged him to just send me home!
Unfortunately, this was not the end of my misery. I managed to get through the rest of the practical without incident until the very end. It was 40 degrees in Ottawa that day and we were in the top floor kitchen (which is not made for pastry) and we had ovens and stoves all turned on and only one freezer for fourteen people. Our dessert had to be in the freezer for a minimum of 30 minutes. My cake was in the freezer for 35 and it was time to present. When you unmold the cake you have to flip it over so that the top becomes the bottom. Isabelle was working next to me and when she went to flip hers over it started leaking. She caught it but couldn't unmold it. I hoped mine would work. I flipped mine over, no leaking, and managed to unmold it. Beautiful!! The disasters from earlier were over! The next step was to quickly pipe lines of Chantilly cream in between each of the ladyfingers. I bent down into my fridge to grab my Chantilly cream and by the time I did this (about 20 seconds) my cake had imploded on itself. Yup, imploded. Nothing I could do. Bavarian cream was running all over the counter. I tried putting it back in the freezer, but it wouldn't freeze so I grabbed a mixing bowl and dumped it into the bowl. When Chef finally came to evaluate mine, he asked where it was. I pulled the bowl out and he doubled over in laughter. If he wasn't laughing before, he sure was now! I couldn't believe what he did next! He actually took out his phone and took a picture of my misery! He said he had to show it to his friends! He said "you get points for making me laugh today." Worst day ever, I'm surprised I didn't cry.
Okay, okay...it was a little funny...now.
Oh, and sorry, no pictures! I did not want any evidence!
1 comments:
Love your blog Sweetie. Worth the wait!
Post a Comment