I'm back to blogging as soon I get home from a practical class! Actually, it's because I have nothing to do. Half of the reason is also because Star World is now playing "The Apartment - Design your destiny", a reality show consisting of people from all kinds of occupation coming together as different teams competing to win a house (If I am not wrong), and they compete by creating a room with a limited budget to meet the requirements for that challenge.
Like, create a entertainment room with a Star World's element within the room.
It is incredibly boring, like someone decided to come up with this concept, get a few Z class actors to be the judges and host, and pass half-assed comments to the participating teams, none of the comments made any sense.
Even the winning team wins on what basis, I have no idea. Like, the colours is nice, the combo is nice, but practicality wise, you can't open the door to the balcony because the sofa is in the way and their "Star World" element is close to zero, yet the team can still win the challenge.
The host will announce a cheesy tagline like "Let the court begin" during the results slot time and bang his hand against the table like those judges in the courtroom does...with a hammer. He bang his HAND. Hand?! Like WTF? Low budget??
Aiyah. In short, that show gets on my nerves. Because I just want to watch plain old sitcoms like "How I met your mother", or "Suburgatory" or "Once a Upon a Time" to unwind. But NO! They had to go ahead and play these stupid shows.
Okay. End of rant. Usually it's Ben who gets to hear all these, but he's not here yet, so you guys have to hear it first hand. =P
Alright. Back to school! Today's a very, very exciting day!!!
Yesterday after demo, I texted Ben and told him that the upcoming practical class is going to be challenging, and I am super excited about it!
We had Tendresse Log, a Christmas creation and the demonstration for making candied chestnuts - both of which was conducted by Chef Fabrice, who was back from his 2 weeks long India Business trip.
First up, we have the candied chestnuts - which is basically canned chestnuts (Sabaton brand), the best French chestnuts out there, canned in vanilla syrup, with a single vanilla pod.
The chestnuts has to be warmed prior to being glazed by a mixture consisting of white fondant, chestnut cooking syrup and rum (optional). At first, it's completely white due to the re-crystallisation of the sugar, but upon drying the excess glaze in the oven at a high temperature of about 220℃ for 2-3 minutes...the colour of the chestnuts turned into a shade of shiny brown, like the above.
I had a bite, and the chestnut is lovely, not overly sweet or starchy - just creamy and melts in your mouth.
Next, we have the Tendresse Log, which was assembled in a plastic mold with dimensions of 8cm X 48cm long.
With a size that long, I was really shocked at first. My cake container is big and spacious alright, but how is it going to take in all of a 48cm long log! Then I heaved a sigh of relief when I realised that the recipe is for 3 pax. *Kua kua kua*
Whew. Lucky container; that was a close shave. *wink wink*
So, with 3 logs to assemble, Chef shown us three different looks which can be created.
The main aim of this practical, is to create a beautiful commercial chocolate flower. (How is this commerical, I'll never know. I've not come across such elaborate flower while back home.)
The above log consists of a single chocolate flower made with two rounds of chocolate petals (using the spoon method), and decorated with cut out chocolate transfer sheet of Papa Noel.
The second log is decorated with a chocolate flower as well, but created with stamen surrounding the ovary and with petals around. Of course, chocolate works is always outstanding with gold powder. But we didn't get to use some because Chef Willy (who was supervising us in class today) said that it's OOS for us because he used too much during the demo. (duh!)
The third log is decorated with chocolate shards, macaroons and rose petals! Simple, classy and oustanding isn't it! The red petals really gave the chocolate a nice pop of colour.
Alright, let's move on to my finished product shall we!
It was a busy practical, but the workload is shared among 3; Mew, Charmaine and myself.
This is a new creation for Christmas Log, with a feuilletine base, layer of chocolate flourless biscuit with a Irish creamy ganache center, covered with coffee mousse and glazed with a dark shiny mirror glaze.
It was so good that during the food tasting, Mew was commenting that "the coffee and irish cream should get married", and I became a Justice of Peace.
I went: " I now pronounced you both, husband and wife.".
Turning to my friends, I went "You may now proceed to eat the couple". *ROFL*
I was in charge of doing the glaze, the piping of the chocolate petals and doing the coffee punch.
Then, I messed up the syrup part for the punch, heating my sugar and water till it was 117℃ instead of just till the sugar melts, and I scared myself silly when I noticed lumps was forming (crystallisation occuring).
It was fun to use the mycryo again for the chocolate, because we didn't have to tablage, and it was so much faster!
Of course, if I were to do the chocolate decorations at home, I'll not use Mycryo because it's twice the price for a kilo of chocolate. *Blah*.
There's a little story of how my class's macaroons turned from white to pink ones. Some other class used ours by mistake. So, we had to decorate our logs with pink/limited whites macaroons and a single raspberry.
I'm actually shamelessly happy with myself on this - I didn't know where to place the raspberry...it's not pretty if I place it side by side, it's weird if I place one behind, the other in front of the flower. I quartered the raspberry, placed a little glaze on the inside of the macaron and created a pink raspberry macarons.
Eh, not bad right! HAHA!
Pretty proud of my first attempt at this "commercial chocolate flower". Center ovary is made using chopped chocolate chips, compressed and freeze together in a dome mold.
Oh, hello Papa Noel!
Chef Fabrice was going "Eh, there's papa noel, so cute ah! Like a Christmas"!
It took me a few moments to realise Papa Noel = Santa Claus. HAHAHAHA! Chef Fabrice is like most dramatic chef ever. He squeals when the flower slided off the cake once, he sings when he's stirring the chocolate bowl, he makes sound effects when he's assembling the components.
I thought Mew, my partner was like the ultimate noisiest sound effect person I could have ever meet; she purrs, she barks, she chirps, she sings to her cake, sings while whisking or folding, sings into my ear randomly, makes bombs and guns sounds out of the blue, she definitely takes the cake.
HELL NO! Chef Fabrice is like her godfather. *face palm*
More Papa Noel! My personal view of this shape, is that it looks like a bed/coffin rather than a log. I would love to bake this this coming December, so I'm on the hunt for a nice shaped mold!
Hopefully I can find it, otherwise I'll have to completely change the outlook of this cake by removing the glace and probably using chilled ganache to create that classic log effect. =)
Alright!! That's the end of my lovely practical - best practical class in weeks, in fact!
Thanks for dropping by, and reading/glancing at pictures/whatever that you guys do when you are in here people. I've seen a huge increase in readership, and I hope it's because you are a friend/future pastry chef/future school mates checking out the cakes in the different levels etc. Whatever that you do, I hope my posts put a smile on your face.
I've not been able to fully unleash my baking goddess yet, but come end of my course, I'll bake like mad, get a job and finally do what I super love!
Till then!
No comments:
Post a Comment