But it's over and I have a couple left over photos from the last part of our cake section to share. The week before finals Chef went on vacation and we had a substitute culinary chef. Now our sub-chef was a well trained chef with many, many years in the industry and does teach a pastry section in each of his classes. However he is not a pastry chef and as you may have noticed there is a difference, a huge difference. While Chef was on vacation we were to learn how to make an Opera cake ( a very famous French cake created by the even more famous French pastry chef Gaston Lenotre) and a Black Forest Cake (while a bit more common still a popular cake), a Vertigo cake (some pistachio delight) as well as practicing our frosting of a cake in 20 minutes and our piping skills. We had five days to accomplish this, and more, much more....though we didn't get anywhere near "more"...where do I even start????
The first cake we made with our substitute Chef was the Opera cake.
This cake is quite delicious well I would've said that a couple of weeks ago. Now I cannot stand this atrocious mess of a cake. There are a gazillion layers to this cake. You have a base of a jaconde cake (thin, sponge-like) drenched in coffee flavored syrup...and I use the term "drenched" with much intention. Trying to figure out how much was enough and how much was too much was an extremely thin line...extremely thin. There are a total of three layers of this sponge in the cake and each layer was coated differently than the others because gauging it was so difficult. Mind you that if you over drench it the cake will start to fall apart and as you add the layers to it it'll become so heavy that it'll collapse on itself. Then you've got a layer of chocolate ganache, cake (soaked, of course) a layer of coffee buttercream, cake, and then the tiniest layers of ganache and buttercream, then a glaze and decor.
In my life, even prior to pastry school, I've made lots of buttercream, never with a creme anglaise base, but lots of different kinds. It seems simple enough; make a creme anglaise (basically a custard) whip until cooled and add butter. Yea, not even close. The instructions are the same but the outcome was a freak of pastry nature! No one got a decent buttercream and I think we all used different techniques. So you have to figure that's eight of us doing it slightly different from one another and not a single one of us got a real and decent buttercream.
In the end this cake was so disastrous our sub-Chef had us remake it on our next class day. Ug! That was such an utter unsuccess that we had to make another one at the end of the week. And the reason we kept at it for so long was because it was part of our final to make this Opera cake. OMG for real!!!! For our final Chef allowed us to use a buttercream recipe we were all familiar with and my cake ended up turning out great, minus the fact that I under-drenched my cakes based on a previous disaster with another of my final cakes but that's another story entirely.
The other haunting experience I had with our sub-Chef was the Black Forest cake...and again it's related to how to best soak a cake...oh there is definitely a theme here!!! So our sub-Chef keeps going on and on about how to best soak a cake and emphasizing drenching it beyond its own saturation point. So I did that with my Black Forest cake...wanna see what happened to it???
I couldn't even frost it because it was falling apart every time my spatula touched it. I think this was the very same day my friend Zeke had checked out my previous blog entry and commented how good and professional my cakes have been looking...so of course I sent him this pic right away. No no, wouldn't want my ego to get too carried away now would we???? ;)At the end of the day our sub-Chef had up present our works and while I refused to decorate this mess I had to at least clean it up so this is what it looked like for presentation:
Not too bad, considering what it looked like a couple of hours prior to it's clean up and stint in the freezer. We also had to remake this cake later that week and while I don't have a picture my cake turned out beautifully. My edges were nearly perfect and my frosting job was nearly immaculate so I completely redeemed myself....as I always do.I was definitely not born with the bakers gene but I am really good at saving my own ass and this is never anything I had to do when studying psychology. That was a world that made so much sense to me automatically, without even thinking about it. This world is so foreign. I knew exactly what I was asking for when I asked to be involved more with my creative side, however my creative side has been suffocating for so long that sometimes it feels like chaos trying to pull off a piece of wonder like we do in class. I adore being there, though I don't think I've ever worked as hard as class demands of me, and I have a sense of pride in a completed cake or bread or whatever we're making. That isn't something I ever got working in psychology. So much of that world is about planting seeds and knowing that they will blossom when the time is right for the other person and that you are most likely not going to witness that, which was all well and good with me, though the instantaneous-ness of this world is sort of freaking me out a bit. I move slow and it drives Chef mad but it isn't out of laziness (which is what I think he thinks it is) its out of having no familiar bearings. Not only do I know very little about the pastry world, I know very little about what it is to feed any creative drive or desire in myself. Tangent over...who wants a Petite Basset?:
The main aspect of this cake, obviously, is the nougatine on top. The inside is an almond daquios cake (has a very meringue-like consistency & a slight crunch) and probably some mousse (I do not have the recipe in front of me, sorry). To make nougatine you would use something similar to fondant to achieve that chewy, marshmallowy texture. We tried that and didn't get what we wanted to instead we made almond brittle...not anything like nougatine but hey it looks good, right? The best part here was the sugar work. I really enjoy working with sugar. You bring it to this insane high temperature, throw some almonds in then hurry your ass off in order to lay it out, shape it, cut it, and slice it all before it hardens...all while it remains at this insane high temperature. Not sure what the rush is for me here but I just go crazy with job when we get to melt sugar and play with it.Then we made a Vertigo cake, nothing too different with this cake but we did have to spray it with the spray gun to give it that outer coloring of green:
Granted mine isn't too green and was definitely less green that others in my class. I was totally excited about using the spray gun in class and then I stepped up to use it and it was so completely not fun. All we used was an electric spray paint gun you'd buy at Home Depot (which Chef calls a Pastry Chefs Playground) and fill it with melted white chocolate and green food coloring. Not sure why I didn't enjoy it but I hurried up as much as I could to get done and that's why my cake is green-ish instead of green.Very popular cake though, here's the inside cut:
We have a fruit jelly on top, covered in pistachio mousse, a sponge cake underneath, more mousse (of course) and an hazelnut daquiose on the bottom.For our final I presented my tarts first and Chef ripped me a new one. My doughs weren't fully cooked, my fillings, almost all, came out weird or just plain wrong, and I was absolutely miserable. The following day I presented cakes and reached complete redemption!!!!! This is definitely a niche for me. My redemption came in two ways....while I did not present six perfect cakes to him they were each put together well (except for my Mocha cake which was over drenched and began falling apart just like my Black Forest cake) and really well made cakes. I truly hope I've emphasized how difficult these cakes have been to actually make because it has not been easy in the slightest. So Chef explained the things that could've been better about them, all small bits of detail work, and was pleased to know that I get the technique of cake making and that I execute it well. Whew! That's a huge compliment. Also...mousses. Have you ever actually made a mousse? I hadn't until class and it is quite a specific process...especially as you add additional ingredient to it which immediately change the consistency of it. Each one of my cakes had "really good" mousses....YES!!!!! Huge deal to me!
Breads: DONE
Cakes: DONE
Cookies & Petit Fours: NEXT
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