Chocolate Showpiece

They really set up the perfect theme for the week of Halloween: chocolate! If I wasn't getting enough at home with the bowl of candy sitting in wait for trick or treaters, now I'm going to be carting home buckets of chocolate from school. Yum!

That being said, I was really dreading this practical. Chef H made it seem so easy in demo, but I made the big mistake of looking online for some inspiration after class. It just seemed to make me even more nervous and realize just how much of a rookie I am. I tried searching for Cordon Bleu chocolate showpieces and some of the results I got were astounding. Absolutely stunning! One picture almost triggered a panic attack until I realized that it was from a competition with experienced pastry chefs. I am definitely not at that level, yet.

The theme I decided on for my showpiece was birds. I wanted to incorporate a few different techniques that we'd learned in the last few months as well as challenge myself a bit. And it was quite challenging. Focussed for an entire 5 hours straight, I didn't realize how tense I was until the next morning when I could barely bend my legs for all the pain. Man, do I feel old! The actual chocolate molding part of the workshop wasn't too difficult or stressful. It was the assembly that really had me sweating. Working against the clock and with no time to remake anything, you better pray that you don't break anything or shake too hard when placing a leaf.

This is the front of my piece. The bottom round is a block of granite - a mixture of broken white, milk and dark chocolate held together by cocoa butter. It really looks like granite. The middle rectangle is mold chocolate with a couple of gelatine leaf inserts, a white chocolate piped vine and a white chocolate flower attached. The top branch was molded from a PVC pipe (pastry chefs use the oddest materials sometimes), with a dark chocolate flower and white chocolate leaves. The whole was covered with little bird silhouettes and a couple of bird's nests made using aluminum muffin cups.

The back of the piece isn't quite as pretty, but I added some large white chocolate petals and some molded chocolate pieces to jazz it up a bit.

Pumpkin Carving for Halloween

Me and a friend from school got together for a little pumpkin carving for Halloween. What better way to practice our new carving skills than on pumpkins? Here's what we made:

On the left is the Cheshire Cat (his tail runs all along the back of the pumpkin) and on the right is Wonder Woman.

Nid d'Abeille & Feuille d'Automne

Today was the last cake workshop of the term and I'm a little sad. I really love making cakes and it wasn't my most stellar performances of the year. I made some serious mistakes in that workshop.

The first cake is called a Nid d'Abeille, which means bee's nest. This name comes from the honey flavours that are both in the mousse and the crispy decoration on top. I am definitely going to repeat this one at home - it is so scrumptious! It would be sure hit with dad, especially if I use some of his honey. I've never been a very big fan of honey. A fact that has plagued my father ever since he started bee-keeping as a hobby over ten years ago. Growing up, whenever anyone in the house was feeling a cold coming on, my dad's surefire solution would always be propollus tea or anything honey-related. He'll be floored if I serve this next time they come visit.

This one proved the most difficult I would make in the term, just out of pure stupidity. I was keeping pace with Jess, the fastest worker in class, and I think I got a bit too cocky. When it came time to make the mousse - a combination of honey italian meringue, pastry cream and whipped cream - disaster hit. I didn't soften the pastry cream enough (the starch and gelatin were both working against me) and the mousse was a lumpy mess. It was so frustrating, but thankfully my running start gave me enough time to make the mousse again from scratch. Leaving nothing to fate, I softened that pastry cream into submission with the Kitchen-Aid.

The result is layers of honey chiboust, dacquoise and strawberry coulis. The top is a layer of dacquoise with a honey almond cream spread on top and then baked into crunchy toffee deliciousness.

The Feuilles d'Automne, which means "autumn leaves" was a little easier to make. I just encountered a bit of lumpy chocolate mousse, but was able to whip the lumps out of it. The part that intimidated me the most proved to be one of the most fun aspects of it. Instead of tempering chocolate the traditional way, we spread warm chocolate on warm baking sheets and popped it in the fridge to set. When we were ready to top the cakes, we scraped off large fans of chocolate from the pans and set it on top of the cake.

The Feuilles d'Automne is layers of almond meringue with layers of chocolate mousse, covered in dark chocolate.

Vanessa and Apricot-Pistachio Tart

Today we finally got to make the notorious Vanessa cake, which Chef F mentioned in almost every class last term. Upon tasting it the first time, I wasn't the biggest fan. The Marquise au Chocolat from last term will forever remain my favourite chocolate mousse cake. However, the next day I think the flavours had a chance to fully develop and I couldn't put my fork down.

I hit upon a bit of a block when trying to decorate today's cakes. I had fully planned the plated desserts, but could find no inspiration for the big cakes. It was only with Chef H yelling out to finish up that I threw on some last minute decor. Not my finest products.

The Vanessa consists of a bottom layer of chocolate sponge covered in chocolate mousse with a jellied vanilla creme brulee insert. The whole is covered in dark chocolate glaze. I decorated mine with some pate sucree triangles and bubble sugar. Chef H noted that my glaze seems a little dotted - I may have overboiled it and eva

Chef seemed to like my plated dessert. I piped chocolate all around it and decorated the entrement with pastry discs, bubble sugar, dark chocolate and gold flakes.

The Apricot-Pistachio Tart seems to me a bit of a cacophony of flavours, but it really works all together in the end. The pate sucree is covered in a layer of almond cream with apricots throughout and baked, then streussel is sprinkled on top and it's baked once more. Once it has cooled, a layer of jellied pistachio creme brulee is added. 

My plated dessert is a little rougher than the Vanessa. I didn't have time to caramelize the apricots, which would have added a new depth of flavour and colour to the plate.  I also find the mini disc of creme brulee is too small for the tart. We should have used something a little bit bigger.

Fieldberry Mousse Cake and Almond Genoa Cake

I felt completely unprepared for today's workshop. It seemed like almost everything I learned in the demonstration Thursday had completely abandoned me over the weekend. Thankfully, you're always surrounded by classmates making the same thing and a wandering chef all-too-happy to steer you back in the right direction. And despite my initial misgivings, it turned out to be a really enjoyable and successful workshop.

The main cake of the evening was the Fieldberry Mousse cake: white chocolate mousse cake with a raspberry coulis insert and a bottom layer of pistachio dacquoise. Personally, I find this cake just a little too sweet, but it sure does look dramatic with the white and red contrast. I had some difficulty marbling the top with the chocolate and red glaze. I ended up liking the funky design so much that I kept the decor simple to direct focus to it.

 Now that we're in Superior, every cake needs to be accompanied by a plated dessert. Something I have been dreading for the last several months. I am absolutely dreadful at throwing together a plated dessert at the last minute. It was almost music to my ears when Chef H made it mandatory to draw a plan before class. It takes away so much unnecessary stress!

Here is my plated dessert for the Fieldberry Mousse cake. I used raspberry coulis and leftover white chocolate mousse to decorate the plate. Today we got to work with pulled sugar for the first time - sugar slinkies are surprisingly easy and fun to make.

The next cake was the Almond Genoa Cake with Mascarpone Cream and decorated with fruit. I butchered the cake slightly with my inability to grease the mold properly... and had so much trouble unmolding this cake. That being said, this is one of my favourite cakes so far this year. It is the perfect blend of rich cream, nutty almonds and fresh fruit.

For the plated dessert, I used some of the red and cocoa marbled white chocolate, raspberry coulis and passionfruit seeds to decorate the plate.

Pumpkin Cupcakes Anyone??

The thing I love most about fall and free time is pumpkin. Pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pie... anything pumpkin. Especially pumpkin cupcakes! I've found a recipe for pumpkin cupcakes which is pure heaven. It is definitely not diet-friendly, but it will make you appreciate life and pumpkin on a whole new level. This version is topped with a light fluffy cream cheese frosting.

Fall in Love with Local

I was one of the honoured attendees at the Fall in Love with Local event put on by a local Ottawa company, Media Style. The event was filled with other local entrepreneurs and was a great opportunity to meet and market ourselves. I made up a little dessert table for everyone to enjoy while they mingled. Thankfully, my friends from school came over and helped me knock out these 8 different types of cookies, otherwise I don't think I could have pulled it off.

Clockwise from the bottom right is: gingersnaps, fluffy pumpkin-currant cookies, chai snickerdoodles, chocolate-banana-walnut cookies, and four types of french macarons (maple, salted caramel, lemon and chocolate-hazelnut).

Buche de Noel & Chocolate Souffle

I hate to say this but I was really not in the mood to be back in school so soon. The month of September just flew by in a whirl of wedding and family chaos. And I certainly wasn't feeling especially inspired today. Our demo class didn't end until late last night so I didn't have time to prep the design of anything. I didn't decide on the Buche de Noel decorations until the very last minute.

The Buche de Noel is a thin layer of dacquoise topped with chocolate mousse and a chiboust cream insert, all enrobed in a layer of dark chocolate glaze and decorated with dark chocolate, meringue and more chocolate mousse.

My plated dessert is a little boring. I will definitely take the time for future classes to plan my plated dessert ahead of time. The stress of trying to throw it together in the midst of organizing and managing everything else is way too much.

The other aspect of today's workshop was chocolate souffle and vanilla ice cream. We shared the duties of making the souffle and ice cream among three people and it all went pretty well. The end result was delicious! My biggest mistake here was that I missed that spot of chocolate souffle before baking. After baking it's pretty much impossible to remove.

Fruit Carving

Before getting into the really hard stuff in Superior Pastry, they started us off with fruit carving. Who am I kidding?! Fruit carving is just as hard, if not harder than some of the other things we have to look forward to this term. Although, master carver Chef Armando makes it look like a cinch! In a 2 hour demo, he created a vast array of beautiful carvings that I could only hope to make after practicing for about 5 years. Here are some of the things that he did:

Watermelon Flower

Cantaloupe Mouse and Dog

Pineapple Seahorse

Honeydew Swan

Watermelon Swordfish

 All throughout the practical, Chef A was walking around shaking his head. Sometimes even laughing out loud at our meagre attempts to duplicate what he'd done. It's not nearly as easy as he makes it out to be. Here are some of my pieces: