Hello guys!!
Phew! What a day!!
I just completed my practical exam in the afternoon, and as you can see from my Instagram/Facebook, I've passed and will be able to fly home right on schedule this coming Wednesday!!!
More on my exam experience tomorrow, as I would like to wrap up the last demonstration in the next post as well! :) Meanwhile, allow me to share with you the final few practicals I've done to conclude the Intermediate Level for Pastry!
For last Wednesday's lesson, Chef Marc did the demonstration for two recipes, the Croquant Gianduja & Gianduja.
The Croquant au Gianduja, a.k.a Crunchy Gianduja, is a entremet with a insert layer of Chocolate flour less sponge, dark chocolate feuilletine base, Irish Cream layer and filled with Gianduja Cream, before being glazed with a chocolate dark glaze with mirror glaze and finally, decorated with streusel pieces.
I am deeply in love with the enticing flavours of this entremet, especially the Irish Cream, which we have added a substantial good amount of Baileys. Heehee! More on this later, because we did this during our Practical!
Here, we have the Gianduja, which is a small mini entremet consisting of a sablée dough base, hazelnut gianduja with tempered chocolate and chocolate coating with diced almonds.
It's more like a petite four type of assembly, with the tasting slightly a cross between a melt cookie base with a chocolate bonbon on the top.
I'm sure, you guys must be thinking, what is Gianduja???
Gianduja, is a paste made out of 70% Milk or dark chocolate, with the other 30% being finely crushed nuts like hazelnuts and then added with icing sugar and fats, like cocoa butter, pastry butter or heavy cream.
It is also characterised by its smoothness, so I am not really sure if I can do this at home on my own, because I highly thought that my food processor can process substance till as fine as 20 microns per whatever or however they calculate it.
I had quite a fair bit of my fun, doing the pastry cream for the Gianduja Cream, and making the streusels for everyone else. Mew was mad happy over the fact that there's alcohol (Bailey's) in this recipe. She was, however, quite unhappy that we had to boil the Bailey's and milk separately to prevent the milk from splitting.
She couldn't bear watching the Bailey's evaporate right before her very eyes. I was on the other hand, busied with making the Gianduja Cream (More whipping cream, melting of gelatin, chocolates and what not.)
Check out the beautiful layers! *Obsessed!*
Ben was lucky enough to be here the past weekend so we ended up devouring a quarter of this beautiful cake together (Oh yes, cue the mushiness and the love song). It was really good, he said, so I packed the other half for him to bring back home to Singapore. =D
One thing that weighed heavily on my mind, was the glaze. It is the same damn recipe of Chocolate Dark Glaze, which I've miserably failed to let it set the very first time I've used it - on the Bavarois deux Chocolats.
This time round, I heed Chef's advice to let the milk and water boil slightly longer, before adding in the rest of the other ingredients - Neutral glaze and the cocoa powder. Actually. I soon realised that the previous attempt could be due to the fact that we had used neutral glaze with water added in already, instead of new neutral glaze, which is completely devoid of water.
Mew and myself cried tears of joy when it set beautifully. Could be better lah, in terms of sieving the glaze a second time to prevent little air bubbles and remove little unmelted chocolate bits.
But hey! Successful try, I would say! =)
Next up, on Thursday, we have the Chocolat Citron and Noiselier demonstration by Chef Marc.
The Chocolat Citron a.k.a Lemon chocolate is an entremet with an insert of chocolate biscuit base, chocolate mousse and Madeleine Lemon layer, before being filled with Lemon Mousse and White Vanilla Glaze. Finally, it is decorated with Macaré, a square type of Macarons.
The flavours was a refreshing change from the usual raspberry and coconut combination, which is a change that I welcomed.
Next, we have the Noiselier, something that looked just like the Bavarois Deux Chocolat, with the same dark chocolate glaze being used, and the decorated with macarons around the sides.
I was slightly reluctant to do a photo shoot on this cake, because it's a little too similar to the Bavarois Deux Chocolat and even shared some similarities to the Croquant Gianduja on the inside layering.
If you're wondering what has Laduree got to do with my cake, well, all macarons other than the tiny one on the cake, is brought over to Bangkok by my lovely hubby, who has pampered me silly with my favourite sweets!
Okay, back to the cake.
Have I mentioned that this entremet consist of a baked streusel base as the insert together with hazelnut cream, a layer of hazelnut dacquoise and filled with milk mousse, before being covered with the dark chocolate glaze.
This time round, we did so much better with the glaze and controlled the temperature well enough, as well as not have one too many air bubbles. We also made sure to sieve the glaze twice before use. That made me feel so much more confident with doing the same glaze if I have any cake that uses this glaze during the exam.
As you can see from the layers, the only difference is that there's a layer of hazelnut dacquoise in the middle instead of the chocolate biscuit in the Crunchy Gianduja.
That pretty much wraps up my last week's practicals!
Then, for yesterday, we had a written examination during the first 30 minutes of Demo Class before Chef Fabrice began his demonstration for Tartelette aux Fraises et au Romarin and Yoyo.
The written exam was fine, because I seriously studied the key topics and was quite pleased that most of the questions was in relation to that. I do hope that I get a pretty good score as compared to my Basics scores. I'm still a Singaporean you know, experience counts and skills counts, but I do feel happy if I get good results. HAHA!
Chef Fabrice is the school's Executive Master Chef, and the superior level would be taught mainly by him. When he first commenced the class, everyone was dead silent. I swear I could hear a mosquito buzzing. Then, midway through, his serious facade soon cracked and we were laughing so hard at his antics and funny faces, and his ability to make us want to learn more soon, won me over.
He's really coaching, sharing valuable information on a few key points of baking, but most importantly, he was teaching us, the importance of respecting each ingredients - that one ingredient can help or kill off the other ingredients. Yes, it seems basic enough, but often, the reason why both students can have the same exact ingredients yet produce different goods, is the attitude towards doing what you're doing. =)
It's really interesting. I hope to share more of my thoughts during the superior level.
Alright, moving on.
We have the Tartlette aux Fraises et au Romarin a.k.a Strawberry Rosemary Tartelettes, a mini tart with a sandwiched filing of rosemary mousse and strawberry coulis.
According to Chef, this is a look at the new generation for presenting. Having the tart shell around the filing, instead of always underneath the filing. The pastry world is ever changing, we can do whatever we want, but make sure it's practical, or simply, easy to eat.
The rosemary mousse, is a winner. When I saw rosemary listed as one of the ingredients, I was thinking about whole turkey/chicken and even the Foccacia Rosemary, but the thought of it being a mousse didn't cross my mind. However, the whole combination with the crisp Pate Sablée made this a winner.
Last but not least, for the final practical to conclude the intermediate level before the exam, was this.
Yoyo, a.k.a erm, yoyo.
It's a beautiful chocolate sphere (2 halves joining to become a ball), filled with Nutella cream and crumbled dough speculos, and finally topped with a nice little Raspberry mousse dome. My heart's desire to work with chocolate is now kinda appeased because we get to make the chocolate spheres in the mold, before unmolding and getting it assembled.
The school didn't have enough flexible moulds to cater to the size of the chocolate spheres and raspberry domes which is the same as the Chef, so we made little Yoyo instead, about 30% decrease from the original size.
With that, we had so much of the ingredients left, and chef gave us the dessert glasses to take home! Mew and myself had so much fun doing the assembly. It feels like we are really at work. HAHA!
We topped the mini dessert glass with the chocolate cut outs from the spheres and the less than perfect raspberry mousse domes.
As for the actual Yoyo, we only have to make two, and present those two. It was quite a tough job trying stick the halves of the chocolate together, because this was our first try, the chocolate spheres turned out too thin on one side, and thick on the other.
So while trying to attach the top chocolate to the bottom chocolate piece, I was pretty much shaking and trying my best not to crack the chocolate into two. We had gloves on though, so that helps a little.
A closer look at the inside of the Yoyo. You can see the crumbled dough speculos and the beautiful sprayed raspberry dome, sitting on the bed of the nutella cream! I piped my nutella cream and filled the dough twice into the dome, because it was rather flat looking during the first time.
And that, my friends, marked the end of my Intermediate classes. I'm more than ready to head back home and recharge, before my next & last 3 months for the Superior classes. I'm actually tired, both mentally and physically.
The studying and baking has taken a little toll on me, and being away from my friends and families is somewhat draining me out. I'm not going to lie and say that life have been a bed of roses, it is straining to be studying out here on my own, staying alone.
I miss everything I've left behind in Singapore to be here.
Alright, 2 more days till I'm back home! Gonna recharge as much as I can and then be back here to put in all my best for the next term! *Fighting!*
Be sure to check back tomorrow, because I'll be sharing Chef's secret creations and on how my exam went. ;)
Till then!
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