Baking - Lemon & Wild-Fruits Eskimo

Blah. 

I woke up this morning feeling like crap.

Actually, I very much believed that I sleep-walked to school today. It was the time of the month, I felt so sick and unwell, but hey! I've never missed a single day of class, and I am not going to break my crystal clear record today!

So off to school I went.

Yesterday's demonstration was all about modern creations. Chef Fabrice showed us two different entremets, Lemon & Wild-Fruits Eskimo and Crispy Pistachio Sphere Apricot & Passion Fruit.

First up, the lemon & wild-fruit Eskimo is an entremet that looks like an ice-cream pop.

It has got a sweet pastry bottom, a hazelnut cream layer, raspberry jam and the 'ice cream' pop is actually lemon mousse with a wild fruit coulis jelly in the center and, filled in a cylinder mold with the dimensions of 8cm X 3cm.

The Eskimos gets the shiny white look from using a white glaze, which includes ingredients like cream, milk and titanium dioxide.

During the demo, Chef Fabrice has a fair bit of extra time, and he showed us a snippet at what it would be like, doing sugar works. He was working with the sugar art recipe, folding hot sugar repeatedly, and did a few swirls and hoops like the above.

The colored hoops was made using white and blue sugars, and putting them together like how the peeps at Sticky, a Singapore local store which sells handmade candies pull and design their candies. It was quite intriguing, and I am looking forward to trying my hands at pulling sugar.

Chef decorated his Eskimos with squares and long chocolate rectangles, raspberries and gold leaves, as usual. He gave us the free rein to do either outlook for the Eskimos, either having them assembled horizontal or vertically. I chose to do them horizontally.

More on this later.

Next, we have the Crispy Pistachio Sphere Apricot and Passion Fruit, which is a pink white chocolate sphere filled with lime mousse and with a apricot passion fruit jelly center.

It's assembled on a 'crown' made from baked left over sweet pastry filled with raspberry jam and sprayed with pink chocolate spray; making the appearance looked more like a hot pink ball.

Mew commented that it looked like a Pokemon Ball, which was used by Ash and his pokemon friends to catch wild pokemons in the cartoon. I thought it looked more like a golf ball, and when Chef cut the sphere to reveal the inside outlook of the sphere, the whole class agrees that it looked much like a salted egg. HAHA!

Presenting to you, my lemon & wild fruits Eskimo!

We needed to only present 3 pieces, so I decorated only these 3.

Today's practical was quite straight forward, and instead of working in teams of two, we worked in teams of 6/5 today due to the fact that the recipes is quite simple and needed a longer freezing time (which means lots of spare time), plus, we didn't need to do the white glaze because there was so much of the left overs from the previous class yesterday.

So lesser components to prepare = more time to do other things.

More time  = more time can be spend focusing solely on assembling.

I had a design in mind yesterday during class, I wanted to present like, 3 'diamonds' on top of the Eskimo in a orderly manner, but the top surface area was not wide enough to accommodate all 3 chocolate squares. So, the second best option was to place the 'diamonds' all over, creating a mess. In a beautiful way.

What do you think of it? 

We were given only 1 raspberry and I had the idea of putting it right in the centre to be the 'jewel', with chocolate shards around to further enhance the white and dark colour contrast between the white glaze and the dark chocolate, and at the same time, have a nice pop of colour.

It's always hard to work with fruits; I'm always having a little struggle with decorating because, with decorating; it's either too much, too empty, somethings missing or too little.

Last but not least, I decorated my Eskimo with the chocolate rectangles, which is a reference to what chef has presented during demonstration.

Cascading long chocolate planks covered the Eskimo. I love the transfer sheets! It totally ups the style factor for an entremet.

I went to a bakery supplies store in the afternoon with my friends, and managed to get my hands on some beautiful Christmas themed transfer sheets! Can't wait to get back home and see what I can do with the designs! =D 

A layered view of the Eskimo. The center is small, piped into small bubble tea straws' dimensions before being blast freeze and slotted during the assembly of the mousse. 

Alright!

That's all that I have to share for today! If I'm not wrong, classic chocolate eclairs is coming up soon, as well as heart shaped macaroons! Well, with me being in Superior level now, I'm guessing the outlook for the eclairs is anything but chocolate fondant glaze on the top. =P

Till then!

Baking - Fours Secs Prestige & Fours Moelleux Prestige

Hello!

I just want to say...I miss my mummy already!

On the day we left for Korat, I returned straight home from school and we immediately head out. It was only upon our return back to Bangkok, after I've dropped her at the airport for her departure back to Singapore, and I returned back to my apartment - that I realised that she has helped tidy my apartment and cleaned the whole place.

I came back to squeaking feet because my parquet floors was that sparkling clean. My mum also helped iron all my uniforms so that I didn't have to rush through it on Sunday night. ='(

I'm super blessed to have two great mummies, my own mum and Ben's mum.

Sometime last year, I injured my hand and was unable to do house chores. I was supposed to do the laundry and all for Ben and myself, as our help was back at her hometown for her two weeks holiday. Then, my mummy J dropped by, did the laundry and clean the house, and even made one pot of delicious, yummy Lap Cheong Fun (Preserved sausage with mushroom hot pot rice) for us as dinner.

='( Whoa. Talking about these brings tears to my eyes! I always count my blessings and I thank fate for allowing things to fall into places. For me to be loved and to love.

Anyway!! *wipes tears away* Back to school people!

For the second week of school, we have the four sec prestige, which is the hard petit fours, and fours moelleux prestige, which is the soft petit fours. First up, we have the Sablés Lyophilisés, Arabica, Craquant Noisette and Sable Des Iles. 

The Sablés Lyophilisés is a petit fours consisting of baked crumble dough and dry fruits. The word lyophilisés refers to dry fruits. In this case, Chef used strawberries, peach, apricot and blackcurrant. The fillings is then mixed together with the crumbles and then filled into molds, before freezing it in the fridge till it comes apart together nicely.

It looks and taste like a good old energy bar.

Arabica consists of a small sable dough base with a piped dough and filled with coffee croquant consisting of almond, coffee bean, butter and nib sugar. The assembled petit fours are then freeze before baking.

Croquant Noisette consists of a crumbly soft dough base, topped with a ball made from coriander hazelnut praliné and coated with dark chocolate. It's a straight forward recipe, but I didn't like the coriander addition to the hazelnut praliné. It reminds me so much of black pepper ba kua (grilled pork slices) HAHA!

Then, we have the Sables Des Lles, which consists of coconut sablée dough (3 pcs, stacked together) and filled with fruit jelly in the middle. The difficult part, is to work the dough cold and fast, because the addition of coconut causes it to get soft real fast, and your squares will not be squares by the time you bake all of it.

Presenting to you, my Sables Des Lles and my croquant Noisette. 

Stupid dough. I've had to chill it several times in order to be able to work with it.Oh, and we get to use gold leaves now that we are in Superior! Woohoo!

Then, for the second class that week, we had the four moelleux prestige, the Le citronnier, Delicatesse, Douceur Chocolat, Amaretti macaroons and Financiers red wine.

First up, the Financiers red wine, which is a modern take on the classic financiers, here, Chef presented it topped with red wine jelly.

Then, we have the Le Citronnier, which is also another financier topped with lemon jelly. This petit fours reminded me of the Moelleux Chocolat I've done during my Basic time, and boy, how I miss that chocolate ganache soft cake!

Next up is the Delicatesse, which is a soft orange cake baked with a blackcurrant jelly in the middle, and dipped in orange punch for additional softness. I've got to say, that this is really nice! HAHA! Cause the whole texture, soft and a little chewy in the middle makes you can't stop at just one!

Amaretti macaroons is a type of macaroons from Italy, and is made plain, with no filings sandwiched in between, but it must have candied oranges in it. Unlike the French counterparts, this macaroons is best enjoyed with a cracked surface, and as dry as possible, so it has to be rest enough prior to baking to ensure that the mixture is dry enough before baking.





The Douceur Chocolat is a soft chocolate cake with a ganache filled center. A simple easy petit four.

Presenting to you, my Le citronnier and Delicatesse! 

Mew didn't come for practical, so I collaborated with Ying, another classmate to do these recipes. We did a great job together, I would say! And the difficulty we both faced, was piping the jellies. As I had to bake the blackcurrant jelly together with the sponge, I had to first pipe the hot jelly into the molds before it sets and boy, it was boiling hot!

Ying had to pipe the lemon jelly into her sponge after it was baked, and it was so hot she spilled the lemon jelly all over her desk the minute she cut a opening to the piping bag.

Overall, it was great, and I went back home, to a steamboat fest with my friends. =)

The last class for the week was on new style traveling cake, we had the Provence Traveling Cake, Caramel Mou Brownies and Week-end Cake Citron.

The Provence Traveling cake has layers of pistachio and vanilla almond sponge cakes, layered in between with fruit jelly and decorated with passion fruit puree, chocolate disc and fruits. More on that later.

The caramel mou brownies is a new take on classic brownies - it is round, served with two chocolate dices and is presented upright. The brownie is filled in the centre with soft salted caramel. I prefer my brownies slathered with lots of fudge and with a scoop of ice cream - the American style.

A closer look at the atas brownie. HAHA! 

Last but not least, we have the Week-end cake citron, which is a lemon cake bottom filled and baked with a almond paste-lemon confit centre and piped St. Honoré coconut dacquoise. It's a butter cake with a chewy top.

Presenting to you, my Provence Traveling cake! 

Everyone was having trouble filling the holes with the passion fruit puree because it just kept seeping out. Finally, chef offered a solution, which is to fill the hole's surrounding with neutral glaze before filling the puree in. It worked!

Everything was good, besides the fact that the sponge layers has to be of the same thickness, which Mew and myself have neglected. During this practical, we also had the chance to use a new ingredient called "Mycryo", which is basically, a type of really fine cocoa butter powder, which helps to give the chocolate it's shine and stability, but without the need to carry out the tablage method.

So, school's out, and to pamper ourselves, Charmaine, Framm, Mew and myself head out to town for some retail therapy (bought books), movie (watched Smurfs 2, it was so damn funny!! I laughed the hardest!) and had late tea at Let Them Eat Cake.

I've always wanted to visit this cake shop for the longest time, and was finally had the chance to visit it the other day.

We ordered the Vanille Eclair, the Bellini St Honoré, Thai Tea Tart and the Coeur Noir, a chocolate mousse entremet with a chocolate biscuit base.

The Thai tea tart was my favourite, the creamy white chocolate gananche was delicious and flavourful, the tart shell was so thin, and the mousse was light. The vanilla eclair was also nice, the pastry cream was full of vanilla flavour, and creamy, just as how it should be. My only opinion is that it has too much icing sugar on the top.

The Bellini St Honoré has peach and a little liquor taste to it, if I'm not wrong, but it wasn't my favourite. I wanted to try their Thai Tea St. Honoré, but it wasn't available at that point of time. Lastly, the Coeur Noir is not worth my time, and calories. The raspberry coulis in the middle was weak, I didn't feel taste much of it, and the mousse was not light as it should be, it tasted really dense, so my opinion is that they should have a nice thicker sponge in the middle to balance out the thick mousse.

Ah, well. I shall go around trying out new cafes!

That's all for now, till then!

Let Them Eat Cake
4th Floor, Siam Center.

Baking - Croquant Gianduja, Noiselier & Yoyo.

WARNING: LONG & LENGTHY POST! 

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!