Week 13: Cakes, Cakes, Cakes

First of all, this is my 100th blog post!!! I can't believe I've had that much to say on the topic of cupcakes, and other desserts (although my parents probably can).

Moving on... Week 13 (which didn't feel as unlucky as the number would suggest) was a continuation of the first half of our cakes unit. The cakes we've made have been really beautiful, and pretty delicious.

At the beginning of last week, I had a lot of cakes stored in the freezer from the weekend. The fruit mousse miroir (French word for mirror) was one I was really looking forward to making. It's on the cover of the French Culinary Institute's Fundamental Techniques of Classic Pastry Arts, it's definitely an eye-catching dessert. Mine wasn't quite as perfect looking as the book cover, but everyone at my Easter was pretty impressed. I also had the pate a cornet chocolate mousse cake I showed a picture of last week. In order to properly finish it, I woke up early Tuesday before work to hand whip cream to add to the top. That's dedication to my coworkers.

Fruit Mousse Miroir (made with cassis)

Completed Chocolate Mousse Cake -dark & white chocolate

Tuesday was a day of more traditional American cakes - chocolate cupcakes, carrot cake, and crumb cake.

I almost always prefer vanilla over chocolate, but these chocolate cupcakes surprised me. I mostly find chocolate cake to be just "eh." These were really moist and fudgey. Instead of a heavy frosting, we topped these with a chocolate glaze. They made a pretty good dinner that night.


I don't think I've ever eaten carrot cake. It's usually filled with nuts, which makes it off limits to me. This one had walnuts, so I had to rely on my coworkers to test the finished product and vouch for it. I wasn't a huge fan of this cream cheese frosting. I like my cream cheese frosting simple - butter, cream cheese, sugar and vanilla. This one had some lemon zest, which I don't like in frosting. I've made my peace with it in cakes, but not frosting.


We also made tiny marzipan carrots. My classmates and I find modeling things out of marzipan hilarious for some reason, and it always make us giddy when we get the chance.



The pecan crumb cake was another one I couldn't try, but it got pretty good reviews from my coworkers. With all the pastries they're eating these past few months, they're becoming pretty critical, in a good way. I feel I can rely on them to tell me what should be on the "bake again" list and which I should start looking for a new recipe.


This was a sachertorte, which is apparently well known as being able to keep for a very long time. Like for months. You can send this sachertorte around the world and back. It's a pretty dense chocolate cake (which I found to be a little too dry...especially after those awesome chocolate cupcakes), filled with apricot jam, covered in the jam, and then covered with a chocolate glaze. Traditionally, the word Sacher is written on it, as it was created by the Sacher hotel in Vienna. The hotel actually still sells sachertortes, and you can order them online.


This Dobos torte is a Hungarian cake that is comprised of 5 layers of sponge cake (they reminded me of pancakes), chocolate buttercream, and a 6th layer of sponge cake covered in caramel and cut in wedges.

Sunken flourless chocolate cake

Can't even tell it fell

The flourless chocolate cake came out of the oven and it looked like it rose so high while baking. Just as Chef Cynthia warned us though, it immediately began to deflate, sinking in the middle. It's supposed to do this, but to "cover it up," we covered the cake with creme d'or (chocolate whipped cream), and then chocolate meringue rods we had baked. It sort of looked like a forest to me. This was one of the 3 cakes I served for Easter.


The third and final cake that was served on Easter was this chocolate hazelnut mousse cake. In order to do the outside of the cake, we had splattered some white and milk chocolate down on a sheet pan, then when that set, spread dark chocolate on top. When that was hard, we cracked it into pieces to attach to the sides of the cake.

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!

My Aunt's Wedding Party - Part 2

When I woke up the Saturday morning (at the crack of dawn because the kids were running around), I discovered my aunt had left the window open in the kitchen, and the freezing cold night/morning air had dried out the cupcakes a bit (initially I thought they might be frozen). This was a little disappointing, but they weren't too bad. I mixed some cream cheese frosting, covered the cake in it, and then rolled out white fondant to cover the cake with. The fondant amused my cousins to no end; I gave them each a small piece to play with. I think I may have inspired some future bakers. I really need practice when it comes to covering cakes in fondant. There was a pretty large crease in the back of the cake. Given that this was only my 3rd attempt at a fondant-covered cake though, I'd say it wasn't too bad.

After the cake was covered, I set it aside and piped the frosting onto the cupcakes. On each cupcake, I placed one of the flowers I had made the night before. Then, I painted the cake with sparkly white luster dust and "glued" on the flowers and S with royal icing. Overall, the cake did not come out looking too bad. As long as you were looking at it from the right angle (the back was sort of a mess).

One thing I would do over would be to pipe a ring of buttercream around the edge of the cake layers before filling it with the mousse, which was way too soft and got squeezed out of the cake with each additional layer that was put on top. I should have thought to do this in the first place. I also can't wait to take a class to improve my fondant capabilities. I'd love to do more cakes in addition to cupcakes.

My Aunt's Wedding Party - Part 1

This past weekend, my aunt threw a party to celebrate her recent marriage. She and her husband had a tiny ceremony in North Carolina with just the two of them and my aunt's two kids, so she wanted to have a larger party to celebrate with her friends and family. I immediately offered to bake the cake and cupcakes. After work on Friday, I made the very long, traffic-ridden journey out to Effort, PA where she lives. If you've never been there, it's really quite an experience. When she asked where I was en route, my response was "Well I just passed a fireworks store and an ammo supply shop."

My painting workstation

My aunt is not a baker and her kitchen is virtually devoid of any baking equipment or ingredients. Earlier in the week, I had given her a grocery list of things I would need, and I brought a few things of my own like a mixer and fondant. Unfortunately, shortly after I began baking, my mixer spazzed out and broke. I was pleasantly surprised when my aunt pulled out her own hand mixer. I don't know what I would have done if she didn't have one. Mix things by hand? How did people bake before the introduction of motors for mixers?

Close-up of the flowers

The first thing to go into the oven was a 6 inch round vanilla cake. I set aside the leftover vanilla batter, mixed some chocolate, and prepared the marble cupcakes. Once the cake was cooling and the marble cupcakes were in the oven, I began mixing one of my favorites - red velvet. I've talked here before about my love of red velvet; to me it's such a classic, awesome flavor. In the event that I one day get married myself, I want a red velvet cake or cupcakes (baked by me of course). My younger cousins were shocked to see the bright red batter though. After declaring it looked like something off a horror movie set, I don't think I would have been able to bribe them to eat it.

Unfrosted cake - the filling spilling out

After everything was baked and set aside, I rolled out some fondant and cut the flowers that would adorn the cake and cupcakes. To expedite the process, my aunt painted them with a sapphire-colored luster dust while I "glued" on the edible pearl centers. Her new last name begins with 'S' (as did her former last name), and she requested a monogram on the cake. I formed the S out of a rolled snake of fondant, set it aside to dry, and painted that with the luster dust as well. After filling the cake with chocolate mousse I had prepared earlier and fresh raspberries, I covered it with plastic wrap and stored it for the night in the refrigerator.

This post is pretty long, so I'm going to split it into two and post the rest tomorrow. To be continued...