Memorial Day Weekend

The first official day of summer isn't until next week, but to me, the start of summer is always Memorial Day Weekend. I went home to the Jersey Shore for MDW and did a lot of baking. I had a couple free days, a few barbeques, and a lot of new recipes I wanted to try out.

First on my agenda was a fondant-covered cake. I've struggled with fondant for a long time now and felt this was a good opportunity to practice being as I had a birthday party barbeque to go to. The cake was a yellow cake (not a good enough recipe to repeat, so I won't include it here) with a chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream (my new favorite type of icing). I used a new fondant sold at Michaels by Duff of Ace of Cakes fame. I LOVE how Michael's is really beefing up their cake decorating aisle. Every time I go in there, there's more and more stuff I want to buy. Anyway, this new fondant tastes a lot better than the usual brand I use, but it's so much more expensive. $20 for 2 lbs whereas I usually pay about $15 for 5 lbs.


I made the bow loops out of sugar paste on floral wire. I'm slowly getting better at working with fondant, but have a longgggg way to go still, and not enough time to practice.

The cheating/bonus tart

I also made a strawberry cream cheese tart. The dough for the tart was a shortbread, which made it very difficult to work with. The recipe makes it sound like you can just roll it out and move it to the tart ring, but as soon as you picked it up, it broke. I found it worked best by pressing it into the tart mold. Once the shell was blind baked and cooled, it was filled with a cream cheese custard. If I made this again, I'd add a little bit of gelatin to the custard to give it a bit more stability. The strawberry compote was pretty straight forward. The recipe makes way more than 1 tart's worth of custard and compote, so my mom had a pre made (store-bought) Oreo pie shell that I just threw the extra custard and compote in that. Not my preferred method, but better than wasting the extra ingredients.

Original Tart

I also made an orange glow chiffon cake. I love chiffon cakes. They sound so retro to me, but they're so moist and delicious. This one was a huge pain in the butt because it stuck in my bundt pan (lessons learned - I should have listened to my mom and sprayed the pan), but well-worth the effort being as I ate it for breakfast for the next 3 days. The recipe didn't have an icing, but I mixed up a really simple glaze with just orange juice and powdered sugar and poured it over the top of the cake. The glaze was pretty thin so you can't really see it in the picture.


I had planned on also making a key lime coconut cheesecake, but as usual, I didn't budget my time very well and being as I also wanted to sleep over that weekend, the cheesecake had to be nixed.

Week 18: End of Petit Fours & Exam

Last week was the end of the petit four unit, and the exam was on Saturday.

We started off the week with some caramel mou (pronounced moo). It's a soft caramel that has chocolate and butter mixed into the cooked caramel, which is then poured out and cut into pieces when it cools. It sort of had the texture and taste of fudge. On one of our pieces, we sprinkled fleur de sel over top the caramel mou. I just love the combo of sweet and salty. Not my favorite item of the week though. I don't think this was really special enough to warrant making again.


The lemon cookies were sandwiched with raspberry jam and dipped in chocolate. They were a little bigger than the size of a dime, which means they were teeny tiny. If I made these again, I would make them bigger. American cookie-sized, as I call it.


We also made some glazed petit fours - pyramids, domes, and the traditional petit four cakes I initially thought covered the whole petit four spectrum. The picture below shows the pyramids and domes before they were glazed in chocolate.


Once the pyramids were glazed and set, we cut them into small, bite-sized pieces. There were three buttercream flavors in this one - raspberry, vanilla bean, and chocolate. This was one of my favorite items from all of Level 1.


These iced petit fours are soooo cute. I can't wait to make them again for a fancy tea party (now I just need an excuse to actually have a tea party). The cake was an almond sponge, sandwiched with raspberry jam, with a layer of marzipan on top. The whole thing is then covered with an icing glaze, and decorated individually. They are VERY time-consuming.


Thursday we "trayed up" all the items we had stowed the prior Saturday and Tuesday.


Thursday night we also made Chef Cynthia's tahini cookies. Tahini is a paste made from sesame seeds, and it's used in making hummus. I wasn't sure if I would like tahini and how it would work in a cookie, but these were awesome. The tahini is kind of nutty and I sandwiched them with grape jelly, so it was reminiscent of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.


I previously mentioned last Saturday's petit four exam, and what a disaster it was. It would take way too much space here to describe all of what went wrong, so I won't. If I had to give the incoming Level 1 students any advice, it would be: Do not drink on the night before an exam. It was a really, really bad idea. I had an off-the-charts hangover, the kitchen was hotter than normal, and everything was just going wrong. In addition to three petit fours we picked at random, we also had to prepare an original petit four of our choice.


My three random picks were chocolate macarons, tartelettes with passion fruit curd, and raisin cookies. My original petit four was a tartelette with a tangerine honey caramel and chocolate ganache, sprinkled with citrus fleur de sel. The flavors paired really well together, and it was by far the biggest success on my tray. As much as it was 4 hours of baking misery, my evaluation by Chef Cynthia went pretty well. There was no hiding the fact that my chocolate macarons were burnt, but she was a big fan of everything else.

My tartelettes next to my partner Aoi's mochi

Some other classmates' trays:

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: Cakes I

The cakes portion of our program is divided into two portions, separated by the second half of the bread unit. Making cakes are really time consuming. One cake we made this week had seven different components that had to be made. I figure it probably took about 3 hours of actual working in order to make that cake.


On Tuesday, the theme seemed to be chocolate. I like chocolate (not as much as vanilla), but working with it is just messy. Tuesday night I had to apply stain spray to my whole uniform. The first cake was a chocolate ganache cake. We built the cake in a ring mold using layers of chocolate genoise and chocolate ganache. Once the cake set in the freezer, we took it out of the mold and poured a chocolate glaze over the entire thing.


Using organic roses (so that they're not sprayed with pesticides), we made candied flower petals. We took the petals and brushed them with egg whites and then rolled them in superfine sugar. This was a really pretty and easy touch to add to the top of the cake.

Sliced Ganache Cake

The second chocolate cake was the one that had seven components was the Marjolaine. We made the chocolate genoise and the nut meringue layers the class before. From bottom to top it was: chocolate genoise (cake), chocolate ganache, nut meringue, chocolate whipped cream, nut meringue, praline buttercream, nut meringue, whipped cream, and a last nut meringue. The whole thing was then covered in the praline buttercream and coated with the chocolate glaze. This was a really decadent cake. And being as it took so long to make, a special occasion cake.

Marjolaine

Inside the Marjolaine

Next up for the week was our Charlotte Russe. The outside was built out of ladyfingers and inside was a white peach Bavarian (similar to a mousse). Both the ladyfingers and the Bavarian were amazing. It was a really fresh-tasting cake. I could see myself eating this in the summer. My ladyfinger piping skills needs some work, so I think I will be making it again.


Thursday night I had a really rough night at class. One of those nights where I was just like "whyyyyy did I come? Why am I not at the bar with my friends??" I love pastry school, and I'm so happy I made this decision to enroll. That said, not every class is a walk in the park. On Thursday, my jaconde (a very thin sheet cake we were using for two different cakes) was over-baked (each class has two assigned people to be bakers) and then another classmate carelessly unmolded my cake and broke it into many pieces. After that, the cake was basically unusable. I'm a total perfectionist when it comes to baking and school, so I was pretty unhappy about this. I ended up being able to scavenge some of my classmate's leftovers in order to make both of my cakes.


The Charlotte Royale was one of the cakes we made with the jaconde. We made a jelly roll using the cake and apricot jam. The log was cut into thin slices and we lined a bowl with them. The cake was them filled with a vanilla Bavarian cream with a round of white genoise placed for what would become the bottom of the cake. Once the cake set in the freezer, we flipped it over out of the bowl. I'm not sure yet how this cake tastes (it's one of three in my freezer currently), but it looks like a brain. If we had used red raspberry jam, this would have been the perfect Halloween cake. Right next to the peeled grape "eye balls."

Silpat with just the chocolate batter on it

Baked pattern cake

The next cake was one I was really excited to learn how to make. When I lived in Boston, there was this amazing dessert bar/bakery called Finale and they always had these type of cakes in the display case where the outside was a patterned cake. I never had any idea of how they got the cake baked into that pattern, but now I know the secret. Using a stencil and some chocolate cake batter (pate a cornet to be exact), you apply the chocolate to the Silpat (nonstick liner) and then freeze it. Once it's frozen, you put a white batter on top of the chocolate design, spread it thin, and then bake it. It's amazing!


This is the unfinished chocolate mousse cake that is currently in my freezer. I texted my roommate on Saturday, "If you're feeling inclined to bring home anything that needs to be frozen, don't." We have this cake, a Charlotte Russe, and a Charlotte Royale in the freezer taking up basically every inch of space. The chocolate mousse cake has white chocolate and chocolate mousse on the inside. Our mousse came out not as great as we had hoped, but tasted great. At some point this week, I'll finish that cake with some whipped cream and bring it to work. I'm really enjoying cakes so far. It's rewarding to have all the different components come together into something beautiful. This week we tackle some traditional American cakes, which will be a nice break from the plain and boring genoise!

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.

Cupcake Travels: Philadelphia

I love eating cupcakes that were not baked by me. Don't get me wrong; I think my cupcakes are absolutely the best, but sometimes it's nice just to go to a counter, order a cupcake, and be able to eat it immediately rather than the time and effort it takes to make my own.

If you read my posts about my trip to Australia, you know that whenever I travel somewhere, I research every bakery in the area I could possibly visit. Now, my friends have grown accustomed to this and preempt my search by sending me any bakery news they come across. A few days before my trip to Philly in early October, my friend Vica (also my travel partner when in Australia) forwarded me a Daily Candy email about a new bakery that just opened, Flying Monkey Deuce. The bakery's online menu was amazing - there were so many flavors and I couldn't wait to try them all (or at least most of them).

Loved the tiny adornments - look at the flower on the raspberry!

On the Sunday of my visit, Vica and I took the long trek from my brother's apartment to Flying Monkey Deuce. We were a bit disappointed that there was a very limited selection of cupcakes left. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon, so I guess a morning rush had wiped out most of the available cupcakes. There were still a few to choose from and we selected vanilla/vanilla, chocolate/vanilla, chocolate/strawberry, and vanilla/raspberry.

Cupcakes cut up and ready to be sampled

The actual bakery itself was adorable. It was very retro and homey feeling. Not to mention they had this great connecting garden to the bakery where you could enjoy your cupcakes. As for the cupcakes themselves, I was a big fan of the vanilla cake. It was really moist and vanilla-y. I find vanilla cake to be the trickiest for bakeries to get right, and this was one of the best I've had. The strawberry buttercream (all their frostings were either an Italian or Swiss Meringue buttercream) was my favorite. I wasn't a huge fan of the chocolate cake; it was a bit dry. This is a bakery I would definitely recommend to my friends in Philadelphia, and I'm looking forward to visiting again (and hopefully getting to sample more flavors)!

First Time Playing with Fondant

I love cake decorating shows like Ace of Cakes on Food Network and Amazing Wedding Cakes on WE. One of my favorite elements of these shows is watching them roll out and use the fondant. Fondant is a smooth, shiny sugar-based covering for cakes. I ordered some online from www.fondantsource.com last week. While you can make your own fondant, most professional bakers suggest buying it because it's easier and tastes the same as homemade.

The flowers are iridescent

I was so excited when my fondant came in last Wednesday, but I had to wait until the weekend to play with my new toys. I went a bit overboard with buying cake supplies this week, and spent over $150, which is pretty ridiculous. Friday after work, I rolled out some of the fondant for the flowers I wanted to have on my cupcakes. My initial impressions of the fondant were how smooth-feeling it was and also how easy it was to roll out. I cut out the flowers using cutters and then put them in an empty egg carton carton so they dried in a more natural curved shape.

Today I resumed this set of cupcakes. The flowers had dried nicely, and I painted them with a mixture of lemon extract and luster dust. I covered the tops of the cupcakes I had baked (chocolate chip) with a layer of buttercream and then fondant. Then I placed the finished flowers and some leaves on the tops. These are definitely the fanciest cupcakes I've ever made.

The teal one was my favorite

Purple flowers

I'm thinking about attempting some larger, fondant-covered cakes in the future. I took a bunch of cake decorating books out of the library and am now wishing I had some occasions to bake for.