How was your weekend?? I hope it was awesome as mine! Chanel came over to visit me over the weekend, and we hanged out just like old times! Shopping, talking, eating and visiting a museum! I'll share more on that on another post...for now, let me just run through what I've done last Friday in class!
After a few weeks of school, I'm sure you're familiar with how the system works here - demonstration by Chef, followed by practical class; where you'll get to bake the same few recipes as shown in class.
During the 3 hours of practical class, we get to practice on piping skills, organization skills and the techniques used to combine ingredients and learned to look out for signs of how the batter should be, if it's not at a particular stage yet, to not add in certain ingredients yet. Some cases, we can even identify why and what causes the batter to be shiny, to collapse and so on.
I laughed at myself when I read my blog's introductory 'speech'. Obviously, I had NO idea what creaming of butter & sugar REALLY means. HAHA! Anyway, I'm happy that I have this blog to document each class and lesson - and slowly improve on my skills.
Friday was the last day that we spent making pâte à choux. That means we have passed the stage of vigorously combining eggs one at a time into the dough ball till the dough is elastic and smooth, before we can pipe on baking paper. So, relatively, it was a good day. On the day before Friday, we had demonstration class, and Chef Marc touched on the preparation works for Pâte d'amandes cuite , Eclairs, and religieuse au café.
Pâte d'amandes cuite is also known as cooked marzipan, which is a type of almond paste used for making flowers, figurines or to cover a cake. French Marzipan is made using sugar syrup and with almonds nuts, spread on a baking sheet, once cooled, the solid almonds syrup block can be broken into pieces and grated in a food processor into a white paste.
Next, Chef Marc made chocolate éclairs, using the basic choux pastry recipe, piping 9cm long in length, and 2.5cm wide in width with 1cm above baking paper. According to Chef, he said that eclairs is supposed to be longer than this, about 12cm then only is it befitting of being an eclairs. After piping and allowing for the eclairs to be cooled, we pierce two holes at the bottom and fill them up with Chocolate Pastry Cream, or Coffee cream as variation.
The eclairs will then be coated with chocolate fondant, which is the liquid version, not the British's slightly harder version.
Using choux pastry, there's many different pastries you can bake, one of which, is religieuse au café - cute little snowman puffs coated with fondant and piped with little 'beads'. But actually, the name is religious nun, and the beads like what Chef Marc suggested, could be the rosary beads that nuns wear. Of course, whether that is the real history or not, he is not sure. HAHA!
These are piped and filled with the same pastry cream as the eclairs.
Ready to see my creation???
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| Yes, I know my signboard is missing an 'S' in spelling eclairs. |
Tadah! My eclairs is about 9cm and almost 2.5cm thick, but somehow, it doesn't come out to be slightly fatter, instead, the piping is fat on the top and then thin in the middle and fat again at the end. I guess my control of the piping bag and applying of pressure has more room for improvement and to be consistent.
Nontheless, because of the bad control, my eclairs miraculously managed to look the same and equal among most of the ones I've piped because they all get the same shape when I piped them! Chef Willy says it's a good job for the first timers, but that my fondant can be more warmed up so that my coating will be nicer.
I pretty much enjoyed myself in the class, running around like a bee, weighing flour, sugar, egg yolks, etc, and then setting about in my own workspace whisking, stirring, adding ingredients and then doing piping after piping. Checking with chef for confirmation on the right stages of the batter, and seeing if I'm doing it correctly...this is baking.
I'm also pretty much happy about the fact that the eclairs safely made it back home as desserts for Chanel and myself. We pretty much whacked a piece or two that same Friday night, and then had another two for the next morning's breakfast.
Sinful? Yes. Worth the calories? OF COURSE!
Look at that eclairs, full of delicious smooth chocolate pastry cream, coupled with crispy on the outside, soft on the inside choux pastry - it's a melt in your mouth combo, people! Okay, I'm done. Trying to tempt you guys was a wrong choice, because I am hungry as well after looking at that photo.
Till then!
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