Right after I touched down, I was torn between taking a taxi straight from the airport back home...or to take an express airport link into town and from there, take a taxi back home. All these because I needed to avoid the traffic jam.
In the end, I chose the latter and got back home around early evening about 7plus pm. Met my friends for dinner at Siam Paragon, and all of us looked and feel refreshed!
Then, bam. The next morning and the whole week went by so quickly like bullet train.
It's week one for Intermediate, baby!
I have morning classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, noon classes at 12.30 for Thursday and off on Friday. Truth to be told, I moved out of my previous group B together with Mew for my new group C for the timetable. It was days of Demo, Practical and Demo, Practical. It was the perfect type of schedule. Some of my classmates had like Practical and then Demo classes. It is tiring, it is straining and you more or less, struggle to listen to the Chef during Demonstration classes.
But alas, through my first week, I learned that Mew and myself is a great team together. She is fast, I'm good with the techniques and somehow, we both always managed to finish on time or even before time! In fact, everyone in my new class is always on time!
Perhaps that's because we don't really mingle and talk and don't really have fun! Every one else is just so focused and serious, but that also meant we don't have teamwork. We don't wash and wipe and help each other out, like what we used to do in my previous group.
In any case, due to more free time on Fridays now, I'll more or less compile a whole week's worth of bakes and churn a post by Fridays or by the end of the week. =)
Back to school, we now have Chef Willy instead of Chef Marc.
He is teaching the intermediate level, and is really, really soft spoken (he speaks really softly) but is super jovial and funny! Like Chef Marc, but slightly more crazier. When he is talking, sometimes we can barely hear what he is saying. It's a good thing I'm seated in front, otherwise I will be unable to focus as much since I can't hear him. Also, he is very interactive. He will call the students and ask questions for them to answer.
Since I have a pretty easy and famous name, he remembers it all too clearly, and I've been answering his one too many questions for the first few days.
For the first week of Intermediate, the topic was on traveling cakes; cakes which can be brought along for outdoor activities and you don't have to worry about the shelf life or being messy about transportation because it does not involve cream or mousse or melt able components.
On Monday, Chef Willy did the demonstration for Pain d'épice à l'orange, Polonais au citron & Far Breton.
The Pain d'épice à l'orange, a.k.a Orange Spice Bread is a cake with flour and rye flour, and contains cinnamon, nutmeg, aniseed and ginger powder. It's one of the bread we'll be baking for our first practical, but because the spice components is too strong, I wasn't really excited about this.
I like spices. In curry. Or in soups. But not in my cakes, unless it's cinnamon, then that's okay.
Here, Chef Willy finished it in two different ways. One is glazed with icing glazing and decorated with chocolate big cigars. The other is just plain icing glaze. My classmates and myself couldn't take how spicy this bread was and yet uber sweet at the same time. It was just a confusing period for my tongue.
Next, was the Far Breton - a prune and raisins flan custard like dessert which if from the Brittany region of France. It's a traditional cake.
You can bake it in a dish or with a tart bottom, and finish it off with a sprinkle of icing sugar. I guess this will make quite a good nice picnic dessert!
Closer looks at the Far Breton cakes. Somehow, it looks like the bread pudding which is always available at most dessert buffet spreads in hotel doesn't it?
Next up, we have the Polonais au citron a.k.a Polish Lemon Cake.
Thank god we're baking this cake during practical. I can already see myself having a cup of coffee and a slice of this for breakfast. (Which I did, for a quarter of this, the rest went to my estate people)
It's spongey, but not as soft like a sponge cake. It's crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, with strong hints of lemon. This cake recipe involves folding in meringue with dry ingredients, but as the sugar is more than the egg whites, it is not as light as lady finger biscuit, and hence is slightly more heavier. If you would like to try baking this at home, feel free to drop me an email at Baking with Beurre
Then, for Wednesday' class, Chef Willy went through making Zeste D'orange Rouge, Pavé Suisse, Cannelés Bordelais , Noisetier & Le Voyageur.
The Zest d'orange rouge a.k.a red orange zest is pretty easy to make. Just coat strips of orange zest in sugar syrup, grenadine syrup and strong food colouring and let rest for 24 hours before using. It is commonly used for decorating the entremets.
Then, we have the Pavé Suisse, which is a swiss almond-filled cake with apple compote fillings.
I don't really remember much about this cake, besides the fact that it has swiss almond filling on top of the apple compote. Chef Willy even used a offset palette knife to even out the top; which can only means that your pre bake tart has to be really level and properly lined in at 90℃.
Then, we have the Le Voyageur - a cake with sweet pastry dough, pistachio cream and piped on the top with almond biscuit. Which is something like the ladyfinger biscuit.
In between the baked tart and almond cream, we have to spread a thin layer of raspberry jam before piping the almond biscuit over and baking it again.
Something which I've forgotten to mentioned, is that, for intermediate classes, we have to do many things mainly by machine. No longer by hand, but by machine. We don't roll the dough out on our own anymore, we use the dough machine. We don't whisk meringue by hand anymore, we use the mixer. It's less tiring, but yet at the same, I actually prefer using by hand because I can easily control myself from not over mixing or beating.
Which, for this cake that I had to bake during practical, I have over beat the meringue and the batter became all liquid, resulting in terrible piping. =(
Next, we have the cannelé bordelais, which is a humble little cake from France where it's really unique and the cake mold itself costs 20 euros per one mold. It's pretty expensive, and the cake tastes really different.
It's very dark coloured on the outside, slightly caramelised...with really yellow soft texture on the inside. It's chewy and a little like Chinese Rice cake or Nian Gao, but with more holes.
Chef Willy said that the cake molds were his and he will usually lock them up in his desk once he is done with them, because it is too expensive and not many places retail these kind of mold. HAHA!
Last but not least for the day, we have the Noisetier a.k.a Hazelnut Cake.
This cake is the little brother of the Polish lemon cake. Only slightly shorter in height, with candied peels and hazelnut flour and decorated with crushed almonds. =)
Then, on Thursday, Chef Willy did a buffet spread worthy and full of mini tartelettes aux fruits a.k.a mini tartlets - there was mixed fruits, just one type of fruits like mango, kiwi, pineapple, raspberry strawberry and even filed with chocolate ganache, bailey's cream and lemon cream.
Here, we have the single fruit tarts like apricot, raspberry and pineapples.
Here, we have the panna cotta with raspberry cous cous, the strawberry and the mango ones.
Followed by the chocolate ganache, the kiwi and the lemon curds.
The above are also part of the buffet spread, part of the petit fours assembly. We have the spiced bread with butter cream, chocolate squares and the baileys' cream tartelettes.
Last but not least, we have the chinese spoons, which is like bites in the spoon of all sorts of mini desserts, like chocolate truffles or cubes of panna cotta. We can do whatever we want for the buffet spread, just to make sure that it is petite four sized. And also to take into consideration, the shelf life of the filing. For the above demonstration, Chef Willy used almond cream as the filing, and not pastry cream because the pastry cream can get spoil within hours.
That pretty marks the end of the first week of school for me!
Ready to see my bake products???
Tadah!! Obviously, I know that my tray and my so called signboard has been overly used as props in most of my photos, I guess it's time that I start hunting around for new wares! =D
The orange spice bread. Chef Aum was the chef in charge for the spice bread practical gave really good feedback! The shape was good, the glazing job was perfect. For the first class to hear that, I was really happy; I'm bringing my A game back to school! :D
The Polish Lemon cake. Chef Aum said the shape and texture was very well done! Happy like a bee okay!
The Le Voyageur. Chef Aum said that the piping could be better, as it is too liquid, and the sides of my tart can use with a little more trimming.
The Noisetier. Chef Aum said that the hazelnut cake was good! The texture is right (He can tell by touching the core of the cake!).
And then for the final practical of the week, we have Chef Guillaume, who is a pastry and bakery chef but teaches more on bakery side. He is an extremely good looking chef and was Sonya's favourite chef! This was the first time I've ever had him conducting the practical class, and he speaks really good English with no funny accent like the other French Chef. HAHA!
Okay, come back to my baked products please. I'll see if I get a chance to take photo with him the next few weeks or not, and I'll just show you guys how good looking he is okay!
Meanwhile, please be contented with my fruit tartelettes~ Do forgive me for the lousy picture quality. I took these with my Iphone because during transportation, my fruits is all over the place already.
Check out my raspberry and super round apricots!! I love it! I love that its super round like an egg yolk hahahaha!!
Then, there's my kiwi and strawberry tarts!
Last but not least, we have the mixed fruit tarts! I adore these little tarts so much because it's mini and it's uber cute! The apple flans make it looked like the Sydney's Opera House, doesn't it?
Chef Guillaume said that the presentation is good, the almond cream has to be piped a little bit more to fill the top, the glazing is good, but could be better for the kiwi, and the apple flan has to be slightly shorter so that it doesn't fall over after a while, but over all, a job well done! =)
He was really taking a good long look at every angle of my tarts, I tell ya! Which is good, because you get to identify where is your mistakes at once and all. That pretty much sums up my first week back at school!
Whew. I spent close to 3 hours on this post, but that's okay. I have the whole long weekend of a total 5 days to rest! Woohoo!!
Till then!
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