Baking - Club Sandwich, Chocolate Caramel Tartlet & Chocolate Vanilla Pear Tart

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!

Intermediate Week 1: Baking - Gâteaux de voyage & Mini tartelettes aux fruits.

Bonjour! 

Right after I touched down, I was torn between taking a taxi straight from the airport back home...or to take an express airport link into town and from there, take a taxi back home. All these because I needed to avoid the traffic jam.

In the end, I chose the latter and got back home around early evening about 7plus pm. Met my friends for dinner at Siam Paragon, and all of us looked and feel refreshed!

Then, bam. The next morning and the whole week went by so quickly like bullet train.

It's week one for Intermediate, baby!

I have morning classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, noon classes at 12.30 for Thursday and off on Friday. Truth to be told, I moved out of my previous group B together with Mew for my new group C for the timetable. It was days of Demo, Practical and Demo, Practical. It was the perfect type of schedule. Some of my classmates had like Practical and then Demo classes. It is tiring, it is straining and you more or less, struggle to listen to the Chef during Demonstration classes.

But alas, through my first week, I learned that Mew and myself is a great team together. She is fast, I'm good with the techniques and somehow, we both always managed to finish on time or even before time! In fact, everyone in my new class is always on time!

Perhaps that's because we don't really mingle and talk and don't really have fun! Every one else is just so focused and serious, but that also meant we don't have teamwork. We don't wash and wipe and help each other out, like what we used to do in my previous group.

In any case, due to more free time on Fridays now, I'll more or less compile a whole week's worth of bakes and churn a post by Fridays or by the end of the week. =)

Back to school, we now have Chef Willy instead of Chef Marc.

He is teaching the intermediate level, and is really, really soft spoken (he speaks really softly) but is super jovial and funny! Like Chef Marc, but slightly more crazier. When he is talking, sometimes we can barely hear what he is saying. It's a good thing I'm seated in front, otherwise I will be unable to focus as much since I can't hear him. Also, he is very interactive. He will call the students and ask questions for them to answer.

Since I have a pretty easy and famous name, he remembers it all too clearly, and I've been answering his one too many questions for the first few days.

For the first week of Intermediate, the topic was on traveling cakes; cakes which can be brought along for outdoor activities and you don't have to worry about the shelf life or being messy about transportation because it does not involve cream or mousse or melt able components.

On Monday, Chef Willy did the demonstration for  Pain d'épice à l'orange, Polonais au citron & Far Breton.

The Pain d'épice à l'orange, a.k.a Orange Spice Bread is a cake with flour and rye flour, and contains cinnamon, nutmeg, aniseed and ginger powder. It's one of the bread we'll be baking for our first practical, but because the spice components is too strong, I wasn't really excited about this.

I like spices. In curry. Or in soups. But not in my cakes, unless it's cinnamon, then that's okay. 

Here, Chef Willy finished it in two different ways. One is glazed with icing glazing and decorated with chocolate big cigars. The other is just plain icing glaze. My classmates and myself couldn't take how spicy this bread was and yet uber sweet at the same time. It was just a confusing period for my tongue.

Next, was the Far Breton - a prune and raisins flan custard like dessert which if from the Brittany region of France. It's a traditional cake.

You can bake it in a dish or with a tart bottom, and finish it off with a sprinkle of icing sugar. I guess this will make quite a good nice picnic dessert!

Closer looks at the Far Breton cakes. Somehow, it looks like the bread pudding which is always available at most dessert buffet spreads in hotel doesn't it?

Next up, we have the Polonais au citron a.k.a Polish Lemon Cake.

Thank god we're baking this cake during practical. I can already see myself having a cup of coffee and a slice of this for breakfast. (Which I did, for a quarter of this, the rest went to my estate people)

It's spongey, but not as soft like a sponge cake. It's crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, with strong hints of lemon. This cake recipe involves folding in meringue with dry ingredients, but as the sugar is more than the egg whites, it is not as light as lady finger biscuit, and hence is slightly more heavier. If you would like to try baking this at home,  feel free to drop me an email at Baking with Beurre

Then, for Wednesday' class, Chef Willy went through making Zeste D'orange Rouge, Pavé Suisse, Cannelés Bordelais , Noisetier & Le Voyageur.

The Zest d'orange rouge a.k.a red orange zest is pretty easy to make. Just coat strips of orange zest in sugar syrup, grenadine syrup and strong food colouring and let rest for 24 hours before using. It is commonly used for decorating the entremets.

Then, we have the Pavé Suisse, which is a swiss almond-filled cake with apple compote fillings.

I don't really remember much about this cake, besides the fact that it has swiss almond filling on top of the apple compote. Chef Willy even used a offset palette knife to even out the top; which can only means that your pre bake tart has to be really level and properly lined in at 90℃.

Then, we have the Le Voyageur - a cake with sweet pastry dough, pistachio cream and piped on the top with almond biscuit. Which is something like the ladyfinger biscuit.

In between the baked tart and almond cream, we have to spread a thin layer of raspberry jam before piping the almond biscuit over and baking it again. 

Something which I've forgotten to mentioned, is that, for intermediate classes, we have to do many things mainly by machine. No longer by hand, but by machine. We don't roll the dough out on our own anymore, we use the dough machine. We don't whisk meringue by hand anymore, we use the mixer. It's less tiring, but yet at the same, I actually prefer using by hand because I can easily control myself from not over mixing or beating. 

Which, for this cake that I had to bake during practical, I have over beat the meringue and the batter became all liquid, resulting in terrible piping. =(

Next, we have the cannelé bordelais, which is a humble little cake from France where it's really unique and the cake mold itself costs 20 euros per one mold. It's pretty expensive, and the cake tastes really different.

It's very dark coloured on the outside, slightly caramelised...with really yellow soft texture on the inside. It's chewy and a little like Chinese Rice cake or Nian Gao, but with more holes. 

Chef Willy said that the cake molds were his and he will usually lock them up in his desk once he is done with them, because it is too expensive and not many places retail these kind of mold. HAHA! 

Last but not least for the day, we have the Noisetier a.k.a Hazelnut Cake.

This cake is the little brother of the Polish lemon cake. Only slightly shorter in height, with candied peels and hazelnut flour and decorated with crushed almonds. =) 

Then, on Thursday,  Chef Willy did a buffet spread worthy and full of mini tartelettes aux fruits a.k.a mini tartlets - there was mixed fruits, just one type of fruits like mango, kiwi, pineapple, raspberry strawberry and even filed with chocolate ganache, bailey's cream and lemon cream. 

Here, we have the single fruit tarts like apricot, raspberry and pineapples.

Notice how pretty the fruit tartelettes is? There's also the red orange zest which Chef Willy had prepared previously, used as decoration on the pineapple tartelettes.

Here, we have the panna cotta with raspberry cous cous, the strawberry and the mango ones.

Followed by the chocolate ganache, the kiwi and the lemon curds.

The above are also part of the buffet spread, part of the petit fours assembly. We have the spiced bread with butter cream, chocolate squares and the baileys' cream tartelettes.

Last but not least, we have the chinese spoons, which is like bites in the spoon of all sorts of mini desserts, like chocolate truffles or cubes of panna cotta. We can do whatever we want for the buffet spread, just to make sure that it is petite four sized. And also to take into consideration, the shelf life of the filing. For the above demonstration, Chef Willy used almond cream as the filing, and not pastry cream because the pastry cream can get spoil within hours.

That pretty marks the end of the first week of school for me!

Ready to see my bake products??? 

Tadah!! Obviously, I know that my tray and my so called signboard has been overly used as props in most of my photos, I guess it's time that I start hunting around for new wares! =D

The orange spice bread. Chef Aum was the chef in charge for the spice bread practical gave really good feedback! The shape was good, the glazing job was perfect. For the first class to hear that, I was really happy; I'm bringing my A game back to school! :D

The Polish Lemon cake. Chef Aum said the shape and texture was very well done! Happy like a bee okay!

The Le Voyageur. Chef Aum said that the piping could be better, as it is too liquid, and the sides of my tart can use with a little more trimming.

The Noisetier. Chef Aum said that the hazelnut cake was good! The texture is right (He can tell by touching the core of the cake!).

And then for the final practical of the week, we have Chef Guillaume, who is a pastry and bakery chef but teaches more on bakery side. He is an extremely good looking chef and was Sonya's favourite chef! This was the first time I've ever had him conducting the practical class, and he speaks really good English with no funny accent like the other French Chef. HAHA!

Okay, come back to my baked products please. I'll see if I get a chance to take photo with him the next few weeks or not, and I'll just show you guys how good looking he is okay!

Meanwhile, please be contented with my fruit tartelettes~ Do forgive me for the lousy picture quality. I took these with my Iphone because during transportation, my fruits is all over the place already.

Check out my raspberry and super round apricots!! I love it! I love that its super round like an egg yolk hahahaha!!

Then, there's my kiwi and strawberry tarts!

Last but not least, we have the mixed fruit tarts! I adore these little tarts so much because it's mini and it's uber cute! The apple flans make it looked like the Sydney's Opera House, doesn't it?

Chef Guillaume said that the presentation is good, the almond cream has to be piped a little bit more to fill the top, the glazing is good, but could be better for the kiwi, and the apple flan has to be slightly shorter so that it doesn't fall over after a while, but over all, a job well done! =)

He was really taking a good long look at every angle of my tarts, I tell ya! Which is good, because you get to identify where is your mistakes at once and all. That pretty much sums up my first week back at school!

Whew. I spent close to 3 hours on this post, but that's okay. I have the whole long weekend of a total 5 days to rest! Woohoo!! 

Till then! 

Home & Baking - Alhambra, Fruit Cake, Strawberry Charlotte.

Greetings from Singapore!!

It's been a wonderful couple of days since I've flew back home.

Ben picked me up from the airport when I touched down. I think I sorta teared a little because I missed him so much! That, and I attempted (but failed) to leapt into his arms like the movies. Only because he looked so damn good in his blue blazer, mustard jeans and striped tee. (Look who's the smooth talker now! ;) )

If I have not said this before, I'll say this now - Ben is the type of guy who basically has 90% full of checkered and striped shirts in the closet. Partially because I chose them, but also because he looked really, really good in them!!

Okay, back to me. And my trip.

So, on the same day when I touched down, Ben took leave and we went to JEM, the newest shopping mall for dinner and to check out the place. It's a nice place, like a mini town area with all the nice usual brands like Topshop, H&M and what not. Singaporeans' hobby is checking out new malls. 

Then on the second night, met up for dinner to celebrate Aunty Angela (a dear family friend)'s birthday and met up with Chanel, Mabel & her beau at Butter Factory for a night out! Enjoyed dressing up and dancing the night away to loud R&B music that pumps my body and soul, spending happy times with my bestie, and getting all happy!

Man, it was just pure joy! 

What's even better than that, was to have guys coming up to Ben and telling him that he has got beautiful friends! (That ahhem, includes me, and of course, Chanel!) AHAHAHA!!! I'm not sure why they are blind to the fact that I'm with him! Like body language and all, it clearly says that Ben is my beau!

My dearest hubby shrugged them off in his typical fashion while Chanel screams that I still have market value. I think she was pretty high at that point already. HAHA!

As always, after a fabulous night of partying...I always somehow, still find it in me (despite being hilariously high) to use my phone and take a picture with my hubby. Maybe because Ben is playing basketball weekly with his mates now, so he looked a lot tanner next to me. I like that, I like him to be tanned, so man! HAHAHA!

Moving on, I then spent the next few days hanging out with my brothers, Chanel, met my Mummy N and Daddy Lim for dinner, lunch, brunch...spent a good few days going around buying baking supplies and ordering fruit liquors which, my dearest hubby collected it on the way to work one morning.

With everything I need in place, I got down to baking.

First and foremost, I had to try my hands at glazing with ganache and baking a good chocolate cake for my family. I spent quality time with oven, getting once again to connect with my oven, using the oven thermometer to determine the temperature before baking.

I prepared the ganache and the glaze, left it to cool outside, baked the layers and then assembled the cake, before glazing the ganache glaze over and piped the borders around it. Instead of my previous school design, I changed it a little and turn the Alhambra into a gigantic piece of chocolate bonbon.

My family members loved it! It was not too sweet but just the right and perfect combination.

My family helper, Emi was quite surprised that I finished the cakes in like 3 hours. Usually when I bake in the past, I will be in the kitchen for hours, from morning to late evening. But that is the old me. The new me is fast, organized and whips up good cakes! =D 

I missed having golden cake boards. I can't seemed to find golden cake board for the sizes of the Alhambra.

Then, the next recipe I have on the menu to bake, was this - Cake Aux fruits.

My two dads loved a good old fruit cake. So I baked them both a loaf of fruit cake for breakfast. The only thing I didn't have time to do, was to do my own rum raisins and find some better quality candied fruits. I bought those packets from Phoon Huat instead. Perhaps I will look into purchasing some candied fruits back home during my September trip.

I guess my biggest compliment is when Daddy Teh came back home one night and had one slice of Alhambra and two slices of the fruit cake at one go, and he told me it was very good, so much better than before. I was secretly jumping for joy within my heart. HAHA!

It's a pity my this side of the loaf didn't have any cherries. Otherwise it would add much colour to my fruit cake.

On one of the days in the week, I found time to hang out with my bestie, Chanel by having brunch at the Hatched, the only breakfast place I've tried and loved! Sad to say, their outlet at the Holland Village isn't as good as their original outlet at Evans' Lodge. The poached eggs was not up to standard, and their creamed spinach was horrible.

The only saving grace was the smoked salmon which obviously, wasn't smoked in house. Then, we ordered the fries with melted cheese and bacons. It looked so good but fell so short on the tasting part. I don't know which is worse. I guess it was a tie. I liked the 5 pieces of jalapenos better than the plate of fries.

Guess I'll have to start visiting the other breakfast places like Rider's Cafe and stuff. On the bright side, I had a great time hanging out with Chanel, talking about everything and anything and we even met the previous night for Karaoke.

I also managed to bake two apple tarts and practice the tecniques required to line a dough, do the crimping on the crust and of course, baking the tarts. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of my product, so I guess we'll just move on from the apple tart to the below - Strawberry Charlotte!

Remember when I tried Chef Marc' Strawberry Charlotte and I said I had to bake this for home? I'm glad I did! But I had to waited till about now to finally bake it. Because we had to find the strawberry liquor and that was hard to source for!

Baking the charlotte cake gave me a chance to practice my folding in and making sure that my lady finger biscuit did not collapse. I took into consideration that the temperature in Singapore was about 30℃, I piped these fingers in my bedroom, where the air con was switched on and it was at 22-23℃. I also rolled out my dough in my room as it was much cooler and made it easier to line the tart mold.

Of course, I made sure not to make a huge mess, and kept my room really cleaned. It was worth it! Look at my lady finger biscuits! So orderly, even sizes and the shapes is there. Previously when I tried my hands at baking the pear charlotte, my mixture was pretty liquid due to over mixing. But not this time, baby, not this time!

I remembered Chanel came over and was shocked to find that I bake my own ladyfinger biscuits! She initially thought I bought it from a bakery store and just did the assembly. HAHA!

What's a charlotte without a pretty ribbon? In order to create a contrast, I used black ribbons. Pretty isn't it? I can stare at this all day long! That said, this is a cake best eaten on the same day, otherwise it will be all soggy due to humidity.

That said, I will be heading back home in a couple of days' time. I know when I'm back in Bangkok, I'll be missing everybody so much, and I'll need to re adjust myself, my mind and stay focus again. In the meanwhile, I'll just enjoy every single moment here.

I guess only when you are away, you'll know how important home and family is. 

I feel guilty at times for not being able to be there for my family members, but I know they are all rooting for me and they have my back. So I will not disappoint them! I'll be heading back to Bangkok this coming Sunday, and intermediate classes will start on Monday, early morning. I'll say "Bring it on, baby!".

I'm so ready for Intermediate! =)

Till then!