Hello!
It's exciting to be back to school, and having a change in chef carrying out the demonstration classes. This term, we have Chef Fabrice, who is the Executive Chef in our school.
He explained that the superior level is all about reinventing the different pastries we have seen before. It's all about the modern take on old school pastries, new presentations and interpretation of desserts. Of course, there's also the chocolate works, the sugar works and the long exam hours.
I'm due to take my exam on 19th December, and my graduation is on 20 December. Due to to Ben's work schedule, I've arranged to return to Singapore earlier than expected because I didn't want to spend the New year being apart - so any friends who's planning to throw any awesome New Year Party, please don't forget to invite me & Ben! =)
Alright, back to school!
Our first demo for Superior, was on Picnic Cakes, where Chef Fabrice did a demonstration on Club sandwich, Cheeseburger and Pizza, all of which, is a play on traditional food.
Here, we have the Pizza, which is made with a brioche dough as the base, spread with a filing made of butter, brown sugar and sour cream. Topped with coloured pomelo, candied oranges and cubes of panna cotta as the "cheese".
Cocoa powder or icing sugar is then sprinkled, acting as the Parmesan cheese.
I thought it was a really creative way of reinventing desserts as food. =)
Next, we have the club sandwich, consisting of 5 different components, we have the pistachio genoise sponge, the vanilla cream, coulis, punch and dark chocolate finishing. More on this later.
Next up, we have the Cheeseburger cake, which is one of the creation by Christophe Michalak, one of the up and coming famous pastry chef who is apparently a big super star now in France for his playfull take on pastry as well as his boyish charming looks.
I found this super adorable!! We get to have a mini one during the food tasting, and boy, it does look like a cheeseburger, doesn't it??
The "buns" was created using viennese dough/brioche dough, the "cheese" slices is made up of passion fruit jelly and white chocolate glaze, and the "steak" is made up of chocolate mousse and coated with almond milk chocolate glaze to give it that rugged meat look.
Presenting to you, my very own Club Sandwich!
Green Pistachio Genoise sponge, imbib with raspberry punch and "filled" with bavarian vanilla cream and raspberry coulis, before being sandwiched with chocolate slices, which have been tempered on a transfer sheet.
Beautiful, isn't it?
I'm pretty sure this can be brought out as a travelling dessert for a real time picnic, because properly tempered chocolate slices will not melt, and the cream and all wouldn't melt either, if cooked properly. =)
Then, for the second class for the week, we had the demonstration for Chocolate Caramel Tartlet and Raspberry Tartlet & chocolate mousse.
The chocolate caramel tartlet consists of a sweet pastry bottom, filled with soft caramel and nuts like pistachio, hazelnuts and walnuts. Topped with a slice of dark chocolate and praline chocolate mousse and sprayed with a chocolate coating. More on this later.
The raspberry and Chocolate tartlet is a little entremet with sweet chocolate dough base, chocolate biscuit, raspberry jelly in the center, filled with chocolate mousse and glazed with a shiny chocolate glaze. The sides is then decorated with feulletine.
It's a soft cake with layered textures and surprisingly not very sweet, which is good! =)
Presenting to you, my chocolate caramel tartlets!
Spraying the chocolate mousse with a spray gun was difficult, as the mousse has to be frozen enough to achieve a nice velvet appearance. During the chocolate mousse preparation however, the mousse was setting a little too vividly, so I didn't managed to fill the mold correctly, hence resulting in a few holes being present. =(
On the other hand, I had fun with my chocolate decorations, which is made with a paper cone and piping the chocolate on a bed of sugar. I think it covered the top of the mousse just nicely and give it a little edge. =D
As for the last class of the week, we had Hazelnut Yuzu Tart, Chocolate Vanilla Pear Tart and Pop Colonel Tart.
The Hazelnut Yuzu Tart consists of a almond short crust base, filled with hazelnut cream and a fruity chutney made with pineapple, papaya, mango etc and topped with a yuzu light cream disc, before being glazed and decorated with orange segments, roses and gold.
The interesting thing about this tart, is that the hazelnut cream is somewhat like the almond cream, and needs to be baked.
After so many tarts, I simply only adore those filled with pastry creams, chocolate etc, and not those baked ones. =D
Next, we have the Chocolate Vanilla Pear Tart, consisting of a almond sweet crust bottom, pear compote, filled with a nice ganache filling, topped with shapes of vanilla cream and glazed with a dark chocolate glaze. More on this later.
Last but not least, we have the pop colonel tart; a tart by that name because it has got vodka added.
The tart consists of a sweet pastry dough, filled with lime mousse, and lime jelly insert, and topped with vodka jelly and a lime glaze. The decor is very minimalist, and the taste is extremely sour, duh! In my own opinion, I think this is another take on the old classic key lime pie/tart.
Presenting to you my Chocolate Vanilla Pear Tart!
If you've not noticed yet - this is the very first time I'm dealing with making a square tart. It's a lot harder because you need to get the corners in, before working on the sides, otherwise the tart will not have the nice angle you want, after baking.
Then, we have the second difficult part to deal with - glazing the tart. The dark chocolate glaze sets really fast, as you can see, right after I'm done with one whole area and returning back to where I started, the glaze doesn't merge together, creating an ugly border instead.
To finish off this tart, we also decorated the sides with chopped pistachios. I had to glaze one side and glaze and repeat that process, otherwise the pistachios will not stick at all.
I packed all of the cakes for that week and embarked on a short trip back to Korat with my mother, sharing these goodies with my relatives back home. =)
My cute mummy who sent me to school on the first day, waited for me for 3 hours to finish school, and after that on the second day, she didn't join me again because it's a 6 hour long school day. HAHAHA!!!
While in school, I had many classmates coming up to me, thinking that my mum was a sister/friend to me, and it was making my mummy as happy and proud as one can be! HAHAHA! Yeah lah, my mum looked like my sister now ah! So much so she bought a tub of expensive gold mask to apply, so that she can be even younger looking. *ROFL*.
I hope it works for her though, because I've purchased one tub for myself too. HAHAHA!
That's all for now, till then!
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