Week 16: Breads Exam & Petit Fours

I am SO behind on my blogging! Life has been particularly crazy lately with school and work, but I'm going to try to get caught up by the end of the week.

Week 16 (almost 3 weeks ago!) was the end of the breads unit and the start of petit fours, which are bite-sized desserts.

The bread exam went well, but we had temperature issues all night long. My test items were croissants, chocolate croissants, petit pains (small rolls), and lemon poppy seed muffins. Because everyone was in and out of the proof boxes and ovens all night long, both had temperatures way too low, and the baking was very challenging. My croissants didn't come out as well as I had hoped, but the overall end result was okay.


The best part of the breads exam was that we all made individual pizzas using the pizza dough we made the previous class. Mine had mozzarella and pepperoni on half.


The end of breads allowed us to move on to petit fours. Previously when I thought of petit fours, I thought they were those tiny iced cakes that are served at tea parties. Turns out they are any bite-sized dessert.

First up was financiers. They're mini hazelnut cakes with a small piece of fruit on top of the cakes. We used rhubarb and pineapple.


We also made palets au raisin (raisin cookies), but my team used dried cherries instead of raisins though, so I guess that made these palets au cerise. They were coated in a rum glaze. These were really good, but only about the size of a quarter so it was too easy to eat 20 of them without realizing what you're doing. That was actually the problem with all the petit fours.


Tuiles are crisp almond "cookies" made with butter, sugar, and almonds. They're baked, and then molded on a tuile mold to have their curved shape. They reminded me of Pringles because of the shape.


Ah, passion fruit curd. My new favorite thing in life. We filled these mini tart shells (called barquettes (French for ships) with the curd and then put fresh strawberries and raspberries on top. I want to put passion fruit on everything from now on.


I was so excited to make macarons! I had previously made them and posted the results here, and it was great making them again. These traditional macarons, made with almond flour, were tinted pink (or color of your choice) and the filled with either raspberry jam or passion fruit curd.


We also made these almond macarons which were used two ways. With some of them we made a sandwich with chocolate ganache. Everyone in the class thought they looked like mini burgers. They've never seen my mini burger cupcakes I guess.


We also made Sarah Bernhardts with the almond macarons, using them as a base for a pyramid of chocolate ganache, that was then covered in a chocolate coating. Did I mention all these desserts are bite-sized? As in, 30 seconds and 10 are gone??


One of the key portions of the petit four unit was learning to "tray up," meaning arranging these petit fours on a pretty tray. There needs to be the same number of each item, and it needs to look nice and organized.

Week 15: Breads

I am so behind in my blogging! For all of you who have been anxiously awaiting the giveaway, look for that post tomorrow morning - my apple tarte tatin is in the oven as I write this! Everything has been so busy, and last weekend I went up to Boston for Marathon Monday.

Two weeks ago was the last week of breads. I'm happy to have moved on from breads; I didn't find them terrible exciting (or pretty to look at on this blog). Tuesday we baked the Danish we had made the week before, and they were really great for breakfast the next day. On Wednesday, I came into work with a HUGE tray of Danish, croissants, and other assorted breads. My brother's girlfriend Meghann traveled into the city with me that morning, and at one point in Port Authority, she was like "People are staring at you..." It happens a lot when I'm coming into the city on mornings after class.


On Tuesday, we also made an oat bread. I haven't actually tried this yet. I just took it out of my freezer today to have for breakfast toast this week.


This tarte flambe was really great. It was like a better pizza. It had a custard made with creme fraiche and fromage blanc, bacon, and gruyere cheese. Basically, how could it not taste amazing. This was similar to the taste of the quiche Lorraine I liked so much during the tarts unit.


We made the five grain rolls on Tuesday and baked them Thursday. These were a little bit too healthy for my liking. As Chef Cynthia said, it felt like work eating this roll. I felt significantly healthier after one of them though.


I'm not a huge fan of banana anything, but I'm slowly warming up to them, and these banana crumb muffins definitely helped. The crumbs are this amazing mixture of almond flour, sugar, butter, and cake flour. The recipe is just equal parts of all four and can be used on a variety of different muffins, pies, crisps, etc.


Thursday, we also made soft rolls, ciabatta, pissaladiere, and a few variations of sweet potato brioche! As you can tell it was a really busy class. These soft rolls are one of my favorite types of bread. It's an enriched bread, made with butter, eggs, and sugar. The inside was really soft (like the name suggest), and tasted great with a bit of butter. Then again, what doesn't taste great with a bit of butter?


Thankfully with everything else we had on the agenda Tuesday night, the ciabatta was really easy to make. You just mix the ingredients together, leave it on your station, and turn the dough every now and then. The result was a chewy, awesome bread.


I was about as uninterested in the pissaladiere as I could be. Made with sauteed onions, anchovies, and nicoise olives, there was nothing on this that I eat. These were way overbaked though, so the majority of the class's ended in the compost bin. This was obviously not going to be the week I started eating anchovies.


We had made a brioche dough made with sweet potato puree. I was expecting it to taste a lot more like sweet potatoes, but it tasted like the first brioche we made. We made a few different things with the dough. My favorite was a craquelin, which is made by kneading sugar cubes that had been macerated in orange liquor and orange zest into the dough. When the bread bakes, the sugar cubes melt into this delicious gooey spot.



With the sweet potato brioche dough, we also made a sweet and savory roll. The sweet had sweet potato pastry cream piped on top, and the savory was filled with sauteed shallots and blue cheese.


Saturday's class we made lemon poppy seed muffins, corn bread muffins, English muffins, and focaccia bread. Due to the hectic pace of class and trying to get out on time to make my bus to Boston, I forgot to take pictures of both the English muffins and corn bread. The English muffins were a happy surprise. I've never really enjoyed the Thomas' version. They're just so dry and boring. The ones in our curriculum though are fried in corn oil (a major surprise to me) and then baked. As with almost anything fried, I really loved these, but they were not like the "traditional" English muffins most people know.

We made a sweet focaccia with apples, cinnamon sugar, and walnuts (not on my half) and a savory one with tomato and rosemary. I only have a picture of the apple one because my partner and I "lost" our tomato one under our station - totally forgetting to put it in the oven. Oh well, the apple one was pretty good.


I went to college in Boston (go BU!) and took the bus ride between Boston and New York plenty of times. I HATE buses, and it always happens that as soon as I get on the bus, I get struck with hunger. And then, invariably, the trip takes way longer than the four and a half hours it's supposed to. I also tend to have the strangest person on the bus choose the seat next to mine. The trip last Saturday up was significantly better being as I had a bag full of muffins and my friend Vica traveling with me. I can't say the same for the ride back on Tuesday, when we were sitting next to the bathroom in the middle of what felt like a nursery school. Without a bag of breads.

Week 14: Cakes Exam & the Return to Breads

Last Tuesday was our exam for Cakes I. We knew going into the practical exam that we would need to recreate the first cake we made in the unit - a genoise with pate a bombe buttercream and raspberry jam filling.


The exam went pretty smoothly. My genoise rose really nicely, and my buttercream was smooth (with only slightly visible pieces of butter in it). We also needed to create two roses out of marzipan and write "Happy Birthday" on it. We hadn't made the roses before, only saw a brief demo the class before, so we weren't being graded on them. Despite that, most of us still spent a large amount of time attempting to perfect these roses. I think my handwriting on the cake was nicer than my real handwriting.

Inside my exam cake

After the first half of the cakes unit, we moved back to breads. Our first half of the unit was viennoiserie (enriched breads), and this time we're doing lean breads.


Irish soda bread isn't a lean bread; it's a quick bread. It's made with baking soda, which is where the name comes from. This version had dried currants and caraway seeds in it, giving it an interesting taste. At first, I wasn't sure if I liked it, but by the third bite, it had grown on me. If I made it again, I think I'd go with the more traditional raisins and nix the caraway seeds.


Petit pains were the first real lean breads we made. They're like mini baguettes, or just a traditional dinner roll.


The next day I used one of the petit pains to make my usual turkey sandwich. It made for a nice upgrade from my usual boring wrap. There's definitely a satisfaction in making your own bread.


This bread is pain de Provence, made with olives and herbs de Provence (a mix of lavender, thyme, savory, fennel, basil and other herbs). When we were making this bread, my partner and I went to turn it onto the table to finish kneading, the dough was almost a soup-like consistency. We're still not sure what happened to it, but once we kneaded in some additional flour, it was fine. I'm not a fan of olives, so I mailed the extra loaf to my mom, who loves olive bread.


Saturday we made some baguettes, the traditional French bread. French Culinary Institute has a really amazing bread baking program and when I toured the school, my admissions rep gave me a baguette from the bread kitchen. That loaf of bread was so good, I ate almost all of it on my subway ride home. Very embarrassing when I realized people were staring. Our baguettes were good, but not quite the same. The bread kitchens have special ovens that release steam, and the ovens the pastry students use don't have this. Interestingly, when I read Julia Child's autobiography, it detailed her quest to develop a recipe that replicated French baguettes in American kitchens. The preliminary recipe called for dropping a heated asbestos tile into a pan of water to produce the steam. Once asbestos was discovered to be harmful to you, the recipe replaced it with a quarry tile.


Bagels always seemed like one of those things that must be way too difficult to make. These were relatively easy, and I can't wait to make them again. We made variations of plain - with seeds or cinnamon sugar on top. I was going to make cinnamon raisin bagels (my favorite) Sunday, but woke up completely exhausted and did very little but nap all day. The dough was VERY hard though, kind of like kneading a rock, and I woke up Sunday morning with really sore forearms and heels of my hands. I didn't even know those muscles existed!


While in class Saturday, Chef Cynthia set up a spread of cream cheese, salmon, tomatoes, and various other bagel toppings. I had an awesome plain bagel with cream cheese and tomato. Half way through the bagel, I turned to my partner and was like, "Know when you're eating something and it's so good that you feel sad that at some point it's going to be gone? That's how I feel about this bagel."


We made our danishes, but there was no time to bake them, so they're in the freezer awaiting baking tomorrow. We tried out various shapes including bear claw, pin wheel, and turnover. We used a variety of fillings such as cheese, fruit, pastry cream, and almond cream. I'm excited to bake these, but have a feeling the fruit ones are going to explode all over the other ones in the oven. When we bake these tomorrow, I'm going to be sure to keep those as far away as the others as possible.

Week 11: End of Viennoiserie and Start of Cakes I

Thank God viennoiserie has ended. I love it, don't get me wrong, but I just can't eat that much of it before I need to order my chef pants in several sizes larger. Last week we had one more class of viennoiserie, and then we started cakes on Thursday. I'm really excited for the start of cakes; it finally feels like we're getting to more challenging parts of the curriculum.


Using some of our brioche dough, we made a brioche fruit tart. The base was the brioche, and it was covered with some pastry cream, apricots, and blueberries before being baked. This was a big hit in my office. I really love apricots; they remind me of 5th grade. In 5th grade, I ate a peanut butter and apricot sandwich every day for lunch. I'd get stuck in year-long kicks...one year cream cheese and grape jelly, another year just cheese on white bread. The apricot year was probably one of my healthier ones.


We also made a pannetone, which is a traditional Italian bread made at Christmas time. As far as breadish cakes with raisins go, I much preferred the kugelhopf, which was a lot more moist. The picture above was after the pannetone got squished in my tote on the trek from school to home to work. It was initially less misshapen.


Our last bread was a pain de mie, or Pullman loaf. This is a pretty simple white bread. Much better than Wonder Bread (as much as I love it). I had to give the majority of this loaf to a coworker to take home or else I would have made the whole thing into grilled cheese.


These ruche, or beehives, were so cute, and delicious. On the inside was 3 layers of brioche that was soaked with a honey/wine/lavender liquid. Those three things are delicious together. The layers were sandwiched with some creme legere (lightened pastry cream). The whole thing was then covered with a meringue, and then we took a blowtorch to it. I really love the blowtorch. Almost as much as I love this meringue. It tastes exactly like marshmallow fluff. We had made some bees out of marzipan to put on the hives the class before. Not realizing we were going to be making mini beehives, mine were on the larger side. Chef Cynthia called them killer bees.

Close up of the tiny bee face

Thursday was the start of cakes, which like I said before, is really exciting. I've seen pictures of what we'll be making, and some of it is really beautiful. All this is working up to when we eventually make a 3 tier wedding cake in Level 2.


Our first cake we made was a traditional genoise (pronounced jen-wahz). A genoise is a plain cake that is leavened simply with a meringue. There is usually no flavor added to the cake before it bakes. These cakes are frequently soaked in a simple syrup (sugar) or a flavored syrup. I will go on record and say that this cake sucks. It's dry and flavorless. I can't really see myself using this type of cake unless I'm compelled to for school. This particular cake in the picture was a plain genoise soaked in a raspberry liquor syrup with raspberry filling and a standard buttercream. Don't get me started on this pate a bombe buttercream either. My partner and I refer to it as "sugar flavored with butter." Not a good thing.


So cakes got off to a slow start, for me at least. We made these poundcakes, individual size. I LOVE poundcake. I would eat it everyday for breakfast if it wouldn't mean committing to being compared to Shamu for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, there was just something not right about these poundcakes. The texture was more like cornbread, then the buttery, soft poundcake I like.


To redeem the slow start of cakes, there was this dacquoise. A dacquoise is a cake made up of layers of meringue and buttercream. In this case, it was almond meringues and coffee buttercream. Being allergic to nuts, I couldn't try the whole cake, but the coffee buttercream was an improvement from the butter-sugar. I served this to my parents on Sunday, and they declared it the best dessert I've ever made. That's pretty huge being as I've made a lot of things they've sampled.


Continuing on the upswing was the angel food cake. This one was everything you'd want- great flavor and light, airy texture.

Also on Sunday for my parents visit, I got some low fat Cool Whip (I would have preferred homemade whipped cream, but cut backs need to come somewhere) and fresh strawberries and made the angel food cake into a really simple layer cake. This was hands down my favorite creation of the week.

Week 9: Puff Pastry Exam and Start of Viennoiserie

Last week was the end of our puff pastry unit, and our exam was on Thursday. After the exam, we moved into what I suspect will be one of my favorite units - viennoiserie. Viennoiserie is breakfast pastry made from yeast-levened dough. I haven't worked much with yeast, so I'm excited to start. Plus I love eating croissants and breads.

To finish off the puff pastry unit, we made speedy vol au vents, an apple dartois, and a mille-feuille (more commonly known here as a Napoleon). I don't know why these vol au vents are called speedy. I'm pretty sure they took just as long as the first ones. These were a square/diamond shape and we filled them with pastry cream and fresh fruit.

Mangoes and blueberries

The apple dartois was kind of like a fancier apple tart made with puff pastry. To make the top, we used a lattice cutter and then stretched the cut piece of puff pastry over the compote. I put cut outs of leaves on the sides. I love everything with apples, so this was a highlight of the week.

Apple Dartois

We made our third Napoleon on Tuesday. This one was just the classic version. Some classmates used some fresh fruit and jam in theirs, but I wanted to do the traditional version.

Napoleon Strip

Puff pastry was our third exam so far. It's getting progressively more relaxed for these exams, but it's still a very frenzied 3 hours or so. I was pretty fortunate this time. To determine what everyone would be making, we each drew a set of three items out of a mixing bowl. I got mille feuille ronde (round Napoleon cake), palmiers and paillettes. Both pailletes and palmiers are two pretty simple puff pastry items, and a Napoleon cake isn't the worst thing you could need to make. Paillettes are puff pastry cheese straws with a bit of spice. I had missed the class when we made them because of the flu, but they were pretty simple. A couple of my classmates weren't so lucky and received sets of pastries that were far more complicated. They all did really well though, so it was nothing they couldn't handle!

Puff Pastry Exam Tray

Vienoisserie started on Saturday morning. First, let me state that yeast is really the most foul smelling thing in the world. Particularly if you have a slight hangover. That being said, the bread it makes is delicious. There's also a lot of waiting involved in making bread. You mix the dough, then let it rest and rise in the proofer (something that looks like a cabinet and stays at the perfect temperature for yeast activity), then deflate it a little, then put it back in the proofer, more rising, and eventually it's ready to bake. The first thing on the agenda was orange cinnamon swirl bread. It tasted as awesome as that sounds. The inside of the bread was so soft and delicious. I will definitely be making that again.

Orange Cinnamon Swirl Bread - Outside and inside view

Using a portion of the dough from the orange bread, we made pecan sticky buns. A caramel, whiskey, pecan mixture gets poured into the bottom of the pan. Then the dough gets rolled into a log with a brown sugar spice mixture on the inside. We sliced the log into the rolls and fit them around the pan. After they baked, we flipped them out of the pan so that the caramel nut mixture was on top. These looked really great. It definitely made me wish I wasn't allergic to nuts. We also made something called Sally Lunn rolls, but somehow I forgot to take a picture of those. I'll see if I can steal a pic from a classmate to post up here, so you all don't feel left out.

Before Oven

Post baking

Saturday in Hoboken was the annual St. Patrick's Day celebration. St. Patty's Day in Hoboken is a really big deal. The town has a really large Irish population, 100 bars in 1 square mile, and a lot of young people. It's a recipe for a really great celebration. The drinking starts early and lasts all day (well as long as you can stay awake. I was in bed, asleep, last year by 7:00 pm), and when I left for class at 7:45 am, there was already people lined up outside the bars waiting for them to open. When I got off the PATH train with all these baked goods, I was engulfed in a sea of drunk revelers, who seemed to all want a piece of the sticky buns. I was able to protect them in order to bring them to the party all my friends are at. If you ever want to feel like the most popular person, bring a bag filled with home baked bread to a party with a bunch of people who are drinking. It's a big hit. The 24 chocolate Guinness cupcakes with Bailey's frosting I made as well didn't hurt either.