Baking - Tarte chocolat à l'orange & St. Honoré

Happy Friday everyone!

It feels so good to have the Friday off!

I've spent the morning taking pictures of the St. Honoré cake I've done during practical yesterday, going for a work out, went to buy lunch and replenish on household supplies (toilet rolls, detergent and food) and then washed the laundry, clean the house, went to buy dinner and now I'm here blogging!

Weekend came too quick this week for me! I only have two school days on Wednesday and Thursday.

Anyway! I would like to share with you some of the demonstrations and recipes that Chef Willy has gone through the week!

For Wednesday, he carried out the demonstration on tart Tarte chocolat à l'orange, Tarte Riz-Mangue which he has created, using the sticky rice and coconut milk commonly found in bangkok. 

The Tarte chocolat à l'orange is a entremet with three different components - the chocolate sweet dough pastry, the creamy chocolate with cointreau and the orange chiboust.

It was my first time, in fact our syllabus' first practical with chocolate dough. While lining up the tart, it was extremely fragile and was prone to cracking at a much faster pace. The creamy chocolate filing has gelatin content, but because it wasn't a mousse type of filing, we had to fill the tart with ladle and freeze it before assembling.

This is also the first time I've heard of Chiboust cream; it is basically a pastry cream added with gelatin and then fold in Italian meringue. It's quite a traditional cream as made by pastry chefs about 30-50 years ago, according to Chef Willy.

For the orange chiboust disc, we piped about 160g into a 16cm ring mold and blast freeze it for 20-25 minutes before glazing it with neutral glaze to give a nice shine. The challenge here, for me, was not the glazing part, but rather, the transferring part. I always have my heart in my mouth whenever I try to lift anything from the cooling rack to point B. For this instance, I was so afraid that my chiboust disc will break into two because after glazing, it was slightly soft. A classmate of mine dropped his cake face down flat.  =(

Then, we have the Tarte Riz- Mangue; a Sticky Mango Rice Tart, created by Chef Willy himself. 

Actually, this tart is an adaption from the Tarte Au Riz, which originated from the different towns of Belgian province, which is actually a tart with yeast crust and rice custard. Chef Willy's version consists of a sweet pastry dough crust, sticky rice mixed with coconut milk bottom, filled with Mango Crème brûlée and topped with a mango mousse disc and decorated with raspberry.

This was a perfect fusion, every bite was really like eating sticky rice with mango but with a french twist!

Chef Willy even used up 5 gold leafs for the glazing part!

Then, for yesterday's lesson, he did the demonstration for St. Honoré, St. Honoré revisité and Tarte Streusel.

St. Honoré is a cake named after the patron saint of bakers and is traditionally a cake made by bakers and not pastry chefs. It is a cake with sweet dough pastry base, choux pastry and filled with chiboust cream, which was created by a pastry chef called Chibouste.

For this, we made the St. Honoré cake with the addition on chocolate pastry cream and made the sweet dough pastry a little thicker at 5mm instead of usual tart thickness of 2.5mm. We had to make choux pastry, and pipe little balls as seen above, before dipping them in the hot caramel twice. 

The piping was the most challenging of all. We had to pipe in curves using the St. Honoré tip, like a flower. Mine was nothing like a flower, you can get to see my work later at the end of the post.

The traditional shape was a circle shape, but Chef willy wanted to show that it can be made in any shape! So he made a square.

Then, for the second cake on the menu, it was this; St. Honoré revisité, which is a modern take on the classic version - which is also what Chef Willy dubbed as, the Hello Kitty~ *argh*.

The St. Honoré revisité is slightly different however, as it has only strawberry jam and strawberry chantilly cream instead of the chiboust cream. As you can see, he really goes all out with the gold touches.

I totally can foresee this being really popular during St. Valentine's day. 

Last but not least, we have the Tarte Streusel; a fruit streusel a.k.a crumble tart.

This entremet right here, is a tart baked and filled with raspberry jam, sour cream before being scattered on the sides with baked streusels sprinkled with icing sugar and decorated with a mountain of fresh fruits. It looks like a beautiful, healthy mountain of fruits on a rocky road. HAHA!

Ready to check out what I've got to share??

Voilà. baby!

Check out those layers! Thin 2.5mm chocolate crust, a brush of dark chocolate compound to keep the filing from turning the crust soggy, the creamy chocolate and the chiboust cream; light and airy!

My Tarte chocolat à l'orange didn't survive the rough journey back home because I was lugging it on my shoulder to avoid the rain and due to lots of sudden left right turns while trying to escape the flooded pavements and water puddles and dodge from the oncoming traffic, the oranges and chiboust disc flew and slided respectively around the box. So, that's why there's no beautiful whole shot of my cake.

A closer look! As I am admiring the photo, all I can think was, that pot is a really, really good buy! ;)

Next up, we have the St. Honoré! I learned from my previous lesson and brought along my camera to practical class this time to take a complete shot of my cake.

I wasn't too happy with my pipe work. It was like fishes swimming in a golden pool instead of beautiful flower petals like Chef's. I suddenly realised that I have a really bad habit and always results in poor piping - I never seemed to remember to practice piping on a bowl before attempting to do it on the actual cake!

I was too rushed and panicked when Chef said 5 more minutes to present. =(

Also, my choux pastry was piped a little too mini than Chef Willy's sizes, but because it was almost equal, it was good =)

Golden, glorious little choux profiteroles dipped in caramel! Beautiful coated surfaces, Chef Guillaume said.

I'm a little addicted to taking shots of the layered cakes, I like checking out the layers of various filings/creams etc.

This is one cake I will bake on my trip back home in September, because the taste is exquisite! Not everyday that you can get a nice crusty, soft melting sensation exploding in one bite! This cake has got me weak at my taste buds, I actually loved the caramel profiteroles, and the chocolate pastry cream is so creamy and smooth!

This is also one cake that I am reluntant to share. I have sliced it into slices, but it's not packed in boxes. It's still in my fridge looking so golden and delicious.

 I may have to up my workout by a few notch to burn the calories off. Still thinking, still templating. I think I shall just go to bed, not touch that third slice for the day and see how I feel about it again tomorrow morning.

 Till then, have a great weekend ahead!