Due to Monday (12 August) being Mother's Day in Thailand, I didn't have school on Monday and Tuesday, and so only had full classes on Wednesday and Thursday, being enjoying yet again, another long weekend.
Actually, every weekend is a 'long' weekend to me, because I have Friday - Sunday off.
On Wednesday, it was our practical #12, on macaroon - something Mew and myself have been eagerly waiting to learn.
The demonstration, was a disaster, apparently due to some mistakes in the preparation room, the almond powder used was not dried properly, hence resulting in the cracked surfaces of the macaroon during baking.
Which means, the demonstration ended with some pretty ugly macaroon. I cringed when I saw it.
Look at that! The shells is still domed shaped, rough and not smooth at all. The feet is nicely formed, but it is still not a proper nice macaroon.
Chef made a few variety of macaroons; namely ones that are piped with Chocolate ganache, Ivory pistachio cream, Raspberry Ganache & Lemon Cream.
These macaroons were made using the french meringue method, FYI.
He also made a beautiful Tarte Aux Macarons, with a almond sablee dough, filled with pastry cream & whipped cream and decorated with various macaroons with fruits and chocolate.
The tart is quite pretty, but it would be even better if the macaroons were pretty as well, instead of having cracked surfaces.
Another version; as a tart let with raspberry ganache. If you're curious as to why are there always so many rose touches for almost every demonstration, that's because Chef Willy loves rose petals. And gold.
Then, for Thursday, we have Chocolat chaud gourmand et son Espuma au café , paveo and Bavarois Aux Deux Chocolats.
The Chocolat chaud gourmand et son Espuma au café is a hot chocolate drink topped with coffee whipped cream made using a Espuma or thermo whip. The cream or foam, as whipped cream for this case, is made by pouring the liquid into the Espuma, and with the addition of a Nitrogen canister, the cream is then formed. It's a little science/molecular gastronmy related, but otherwise, you should be able to see this action commonly at Starbucks.
The chocolate taste is really strong, having used dark chocolate of 70％.
Next, we have the Paveo.
It is a double chocolate mousse cake with baked chocolate mousse at the bottom, then white mousse and topped with a viennoise biscuit, surrounded by dark mousse at the end. This entremet is also glazed with dark chocolate glaze to give it a nice shiny look, as well as to hold the mousse layers together.
Chef Willy did a pretty beautiful job here, using gold powered chocolate squares and decorated the top in a messy way.
The last cake of the day, was this gorgeous looking Bavarois aux Deux Chocolats a.k.a Two chocolate Bavarian cake.
Like I've shared previously, mousse is a huge component in Intermediate, as well as chocolate.
This entremet consists of a rocher feuilletine base, milk chocolate mousse insert, with dark chocolate mousse in between a layer of flourless chocolate biscuit (sponge cake), and finally, glazed with chocolate glaze. Decorated with the 10 white macaroons shells from the previous practical.
On the right, we have the entremet as a smaller entremet.
The challenge for making mousse cake, is to ensure that the mousse has enough time to freeze before you glaze it with 40-45 degrees glaze, otherwise the mousse will melt. Yet, if you freeze too much, the water condensation is also more, making it tricky to glaze as well, which, happened for my case. More on that later.
Check out my macarons!
Pastel colours - green, pink, white and yellow. I managed to pipe my shells evenly, as well as tried my best to prevent the peaks. Despite us sifting the almond powder twice with a special gigantic sift and baking the powder in the oven for a good ten minutes to remove the humidity, the almond powder still managed to disappoint us, and we didn't managed to have smooth surfaces, although it's much better than the demonstration's ones.
A few of my classmates came up to me and told me that my shells was really forming prettily! And that made me beam with happiness, I was quite hyped, but at the same time prayed that it doesn't crack at the last minute and turn into a cracked macaron before piping.
Voilà, Raspberry Ganache, prepared 24 hours in advance. Pretty isn't it?
This is only the second time I've tried baking macarons, my first got burnt and gone up in smokes and turned into a sticky, brown mess on my baking mat. It was a relief I didn't screw this up. Having said that, just one successful batch doesn't mean I can now make Laduree's worthy type of Macarons. Theirs is really crisp, melty and delicious.
I'll try my hands at the recipes in one of their sweets' recipe book when I'm back!
Then, for the final baked product for the week, we have the Bavarois Aux Deux Chocolats.
Hello dinosaur!
Truth to be told, this is one entremet that I personally felt super upset with, super devastated by.
Everything was going well, up until the glazing part.
My Macarons just wouldn't stick...
Look at the sides. It was like this in less than 10 minutes. My ganache just won't set at all, despite chilling the entremet in the fridge for 2 minutes.
The thing about glaze is that, it sets really fast. Especially when you pour it on a frozen entremet.
However, this time, the ganache was of a different recipe. Instead of the usual whipping cream and the chocolate drops, we have like whipping cream, sugar, syrup and a few other cocoa paste etc. Ingredients which I've only come across the first time, for a ganache.
And what causes this glaze epic disaster, you may asked, it's due to the high presence of water. As advised by Chef Aum, my supervising chef, it could be when I was boiling the cream, I didn't boil it longer enough to evaporate the water content and make it thicker (I blame the demonstration chef, who said to boil only. He made no mention to take extra caution of this!) and another reason, is that the condensation on the mousse was already forming water droplets faster than I can wipe off before glazing.
In any case, it was the presence of too much water content, that causes my glaze to be like this.
This was the first time I actually stared at my entremet, gobsmacked by the tradgey unfolding. Even Chef Aum was just standing beside me, watching the glaze dripped off.
Mine wasn't the only one, a few other friends in the class/course had this issue too. =( Still, I wished I had better glaze so that I can protect the entremet all the way till I get back home to take pictures of the layers. =( Nonetheless, the cake was tasty, but by the time I got home, the glaze was already coating the sides of my box and setting on my ice pack. HAHA!
Blah. I hope this dinosaur looking face can bring a smile on your face, as it did for me.
I'm just lazing away on this beautiful quiet Sunday. No programme lined up for me today...just enjoying sending LINE messages with Ben, and using the stickers I've purchased from the Sticker Shop. I'm addicted to that! It's really cute!!!
Okay, that's all I have to share. Back to school tomorrow, I hope the week will be a better one. There's one White Exam coming up within the next few days, I'm sure of that.
In the meantime, have a great week ahead, peeps! =)
Till then!
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