We had Chef Marc, who from now onwards, is taking over the duties from Chef Willy to teach the intermediate level, and I couldn't be any more happier!
He is loud, informative and really...watching him bakes, is such a joy. He scraps every single bit of batter, and when he pipes, he is always, always able to fill two entremet ring with exactly the amount of batter in his piping bag - right to the very last bit.
I guess that's the result of 30 years of experience in this field!
Moving on, I guess you can guess from my entry title, that I have something horrible to share from my recent white exam, but I'll talk more on that in the later part. Right now, I'll just share a bit on the demonstration carried out by Chef - the Tarte Rosée Matinale and Fraisier.
Tarte Rosée Matinale a.k.a grapefruit and pistachio cream tart, is a tart made with almond sablée dough as a base, filled with pistachio cream and baked together with segments of grapefruit. It is then topped with a grapefruit mousse disc, which has drops of strawberry coulis and glazed with neutral glaze to give it shine and protect the mousse.
The final touches to the tart involves fresh fruits like blackcurrants and raspberry.
I didn't like the taste of the mousse cause grapefruits generally, is sour with a after taste of bitterness.
I was joking with my classmates, telling them that you know Chef Marc is back, when first, you see no rose petals on the presentation table, secondly; you see no gold whatsoever on the cakes. HAHA!
Fraisier on the other hand, is a French strawberry cream cake, which involves so much more components, making it a worthy choice to be within the Top 10 cakes for the final exam.
It is an entremet with 2 layers of pistachio génoise brushed with raspberry punch, layers of strawberries with raspberry jelly, and piped with mousseline cream, before finishing with a tempered chocolate decoration.
As anticipated, the practical that followed after, is a white exam.
Ladies, and gentleman, I present to you; my fraisier, topped with a chocolate tragedy.
First off, I was nervous and shaking like a leaf. It's been a while since my last white exam, in fact, I get nervous at any mention of an exam.
Then secondly, my face went white when the supervising chef is Chef Guillaume - after the last few practicals with him, I just get bad vibes all over. Even my classmates looked so shock when he was getting ready to check our attendance - then, he miraculously said that he is not going to be mean this time. *even more shocked face*
We went in, all equipments were set up and all the ingredients we need were right next to me, as usual. The only thing was that, my class has like 14 students. We have 8 students on my side and the remaining 6 on the other side. The working space usually, is limited. However, coupled with the addition of having 8 mixers on the same side makes it even more crowded.
I couldn't really work well with a tiny bit of space, and since it was a busy practical, I was practically all over the place - bowls and equipments from the students, including mine, were all over the sink, unwashed and it piles up and overflows from the deep sink, my space was filled with my weighing scale, trays, equipments and ingredients.
I also wasted time on getting the weighing the ingredients - the preparation room just didn't prepare enough ingredients to cater to the class; we had to find the prep people and inform them of what items to replenished.
That aside, everything else was smooth sailing, I was going through the workflow at the same time as everybody else.
Baked the génoise sponge, did the pastry cream for the mousseline cream, did the punch, the jelly, cut the sponge, cut the strawberries, complete the mousseline cream with the addition of butter, do the assembly, rushed to do the chocolate tempering, the chocolate spreading; chocolate decoration, rushed to do the MEP for the chocolate chantilly required for the next practical.
It was so busy, that we ended 1 hour late and our uniform were stained with chocolate after that.
However, of all the things, I screwed up at the chocolate decoration.
The key to a good fraisier cake besides making a beautiful cake, is firstly, to arrange your strawberries nicely, and make sure there's a lot of strawberries in the cake, cause it's a STRAWBERRY cake, not CREAM STRAWBERRY cake. So there must be alot of strawberries in the filing.
I managed to get really nice medium sized strawberries of almost equal height. those which are not, I had to cut them.
The second part to a good fraisier cake, is the mousseline cream - it has to be really, really light in colour, almost white and creamy looking, like a mousse. I whipped my butter in the machine, and added my pastry cream after, and whipped it for a really good amount of time to have a really good white texture - Chef was pleased with my cream.
But for all the things I've mentioned, even if you've fucked up at the top of the cake or the sides, it's okay. But for me, I screwed up the chocolate decoration, which is not okay, at all! =(
You can have a badly done cream, it's okay, not pretty evenly spreading of the cream on the top of the cake, that's also okay, cause you have the chocolate decoration to cover up. Which is why, I was very close to almost telling chef that I'm not going to present the cake with the chocolate.
The above picture, my friend, is a picture of a chocolate decoration that sets only on the top, but not on the bottom; which you'll only realize it upon peeling. When you peel the plastic sheet off, the unset chocolate parts gets smudged/damaged and uneveitably at some point, cracks and tears apart. Like mine.
I have no problem so far, working with chocolate, in fact this is my first time facing such an issue, and I know very well, that I've reached the required temperatures needed at each stage when working with chocolate - melting the chocolate drops between 45 - 50℃, tempering the chocolate till it's at 27℃ and then warming it up to 31 - 32℃ before using.
The only difference this time, was that I used Chef Marc's method of tempering only ⅔ of the chocolate mixture and then adding it back into the bowl, which will get us to the temperature required for usage.
In the previous times, I tempered the whole bowl of chocolate, before re-warming it to the temperature I need to use - and those chocolate decorations set within 2 minutes.
This time, mine didn't set as fast, and that was a bad sign already. I chilled my chocolate in the fridge, but apparently, that wasn't enough to set the whole entire chocolate, hence, causing a tragedy during peeling.
Chef Guillaume said that my chocolate appearance could be because I re-warmed my chocolate too much, and it's too hot. When I explained to him on my chocolate tempering process; he said he isn't a fan of that method. He would prefer to use the tempering of whole quantity's method instead.
Well, now I know...that this method doesn't work for me. I should just do it the same way I did before for my mogador and other cakes with chocolate decoration.
Chef also said that my piping of the mousseline cream needs to be able to cover the gaps between the strawberries; I was a little taken back to find that there's still holes because when we pipe two rows of cream around the strawberries, we also had to masquer the sides so that there's no holes. I did my best, but I guess it wasn't enough.
All in all, a really tiring white exam; I seemed to be the only one with the chocolate tempering issue.
But that aside, at least my mousse and my strawberries seemed to save the day! Chef was also really nice that evening, and I wonder why. But whatever it was, I truly welcome that change. HAHA!
In the meantime, I'll have a good rest this weekend and then continue to do my best for the upcoming practicals. =)
Have a nice weekend guys!
Till next time!
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