Last Class of Superior Pastry

We all showed up for our last class with absolutely no clue what we would be doing that day. In order to help prepare us for the approaching world of real-life baking, we would be assigned in teams to make a type of dessert. After planning the approach and recipes, we were then thrown a challenge (like an allergy) and had to rework the plan in order to accommodate it. As well, throughout the class Chef E would interrupt us with a question as to sanitation, procedure and, in one case, a mock scenario: a member of one teamcut herself and her partner fainted at the sight of the blood. We all had to stop and figure out how you should deal with the question or scenario.

I partnered up with Jess, of course. And it seemed like a bit more than a coincidence when we were assigned to make chocolate candies, which was magnified even more so when Franceska and Kathryn in the next group were assigned chocolate candies as well. I'm sure the chefs are aware that we're all working on our holiday chocolate box business as Les 4 Chocolatieres... I'm still not sure what their motives were for assigning chocolates to us; it was such a breeze. Considering that we've made over 3000 chocolates in the last couple of weeks, it felt a little too easy.

We started off with a plan to make some really delicious chocolates. A couple types of truffles, some caramels and rochers. Then came the hitch to our plan. Turns out one of the hypothetical clients we're making these chocolates for is allergic to dairy and absolutely none of the chocolates can contain dairy. Which ruled out most of the truffle ideas, as well as anything with white or milk chocolate.

The second hitch was that one of the clients is pregnant and must have some sort of truffle. Jess and I looked at each other, completely baffled. Neither of us has ever made a truffle without cream and my mind was working about as slow as molasses... I surreptitiously looked it up on my iPhone. It felt like cheating and I wasn't proud of it, but we did hit on the idea to use coconut cream. Brilliant! Except the school didn't have coconut cream in the pantry. I nearly smacked my head against the marble in frustration. Chef E finally gave us the guidance we needed to use a fruit puree in place of cream - simply simmer the puree and pour over chocolate, and Presto! Delicious ganache. Which is really quite delicious, and not nearly as fattening. So easy, and yet I would never have thought of it there.

In the end, we made raspberry truffles (with raspberry puree), dipped in both icing sugar and cocoa powder. Coffee marzipan dipped in dark chocolate (some coated with gold dust, others topped with a chocolate coffee bean). We filled two different molds with the raspberry truffle filling for a more polished finish. And finally, molded chocolates filled with crunchy praline (my favourite).

I have to say that the real treat of the day was when we were interrupted by the student services staff, who came in wearing Santa hats and distributed little gift bags to everyone. It was a very pleasant surprise and a nice touch on our final day of class.

Ice Carving

To continue with our relaxing schedule was our carving class. The media for carving is determined by the season: in winter, you work with ice, in summer with lard. I was a little reluctant to try ice carving as I heard that a student from the previous term had injured herself and been sent to the hospital for stitches. And I can be pretty clumsy when under stress.

It was a very enjoyable class. Chef A is a master carver and to see him work is absolutely awe-inspiring. In less than an hour he turned a flawed block of ice into a beautiful swan.

On a team with Jess and Franceska, we made a polar bear. We were getting along pretty well with it, when it starting to rain quite heavily. Everyone did a really amazing job for the first time ice carving. Chef A helped with the finishing touches for us so we return back to the warmth and dryness of the school.

Our polar bear

Snail

Fish

Dolphin

Diamond Ring

Petits Fours

After all the stress of the sugar exam, the school planned a very relaxing day of petits fours for us. It was so much fun! Nut allergies: beware! Everything in this practical had almond powder in it, and are simply delightful for it.

The first batch of petits fours were pistachio macarons: simple green-coloured macaron shells with a pistachio and almond paste filling. If canisters of pistachio paste didn't cost a fortune, I would spread that stuff on my toast in the morning. Yum!

The next treats were little almond souffles with bits of griotte cherries and/or pineapples in them.

Then there are the sables guitarres: hazelnut pastry squares filled with lemon-almond cream and topped with a square of dark chocolate.

We were given a bit of freedom to play around with the filling for the last batch of macarons. I was hoping to make some gingerbread ganache, but settled for a maple buttercream as they didn't have any molasses on hand. I used some brown food colouring to make the macaron shells more "maple" in colour, but they turned out some soft pink colour. I'm not normally the fondest of pink, but this one I liked.

Sugar Showpiece - Part 3

The date for our sugar exam approached much too quickly for me. I was able to get in a couple hours of practise with some friends and homemade heat lamps, but it still didn't feel like enough. It was a weird exam. Everyone was so laid-back, including the chefs, and I caught myself joking around with a classmate more than once. Little could anyone tell that I was sweating like crazy with stress under my jacket.

It didn't start off too badly. I was able to make everything I needed to and extra before the break. The biggest problem I encountered mid-pulling was the growth of an enormous blister on my thumb which hurt like hell! I had to stop what seemed like every 5 minutes to replace the protective tape around it. The heat from the heat lamp kept melting the glue of the tape.

There was one other issue I had before the break that caused me no small amount of grief when I got back. My middle sugar piece, shaped like a large flat donut, didn't come out of the mold very well and had a minor crack. I'm not sure if I jostled it too hard when moving the silpat or someone else knocked it walking by, but when I got back from break the donut was broken completely in half. I nearly had a panic attack. After eyeing the exit longingly and contemplating throwing down my apron for a moment, I set back to work and patched everything back together with hot glue. It wasn't too pretty of a patch job, but with a few strategically placed flowers and leaves, I was able to cover most of the damage up.

Here is the end result with the original sketch of my plan.

Sugar Showpiece - Parts 1&2 of 3

We are now officially finished with cakes and chocolates and will be focussing on creating sugar art for the next three weeks. I've seen pictures of past class' showpieces and they are nothing short of intimidating. The entire class is a little reluctant to start and I think half of us are battling to find some motivation. This year has been seriously draining on everyone and I think we're all find graduation day a huge relief, albeit a bittersweet one.

On the 3rd week of sugar, we'll have one of our two practical exams and create a sugar showpiece. Chef has been trying to get us to prepare for this by encouraging us all to start making up a sketch of the showpiece, which I am finding incredibly difficult. I just can't seem to visualize anything on my own.

For the first class, Chef H showed us how to create pastillage (kind of like gumpaste) and some pulled sugar techniques. All of the pastillage that we make in this first class will be used on our final exam showpiece because it needs time to dry completely. No small amount of pressure there!

Here are some of the things that Chef H made in class with pastillage. The bright yellow at the top (looking a bit like fried eggs) is made with compressed sugar.

Chef also made a rose out of pulled sugar and some multi-coloured ribbon. He made it seem ridiculously easy to do, but we discovered how difficult it is the next day in workshop.

I won't post any pictures from my first workshop, as everything turned out pretty rough. The pastillage was simple enough, but the pulled sugar was something else entirely. Both Chef H and Chef F made it seem so easy and completely painless. I didn't realize how hot the sugar is the entire time that you're working with it. Almost everyone's hands were covered in blisters by the end of the workshop. And we all made the genius move to cover our blisters in medical tape. I won't describe the pain or mess of peeling those off of blisters. (shudder)

The next class went a little bit better, for me at least. Chef H showed us some blown sugar techniques and poured sugar in the demo. At the end, he whipped together a sugar showpiece with complete ease. The bird on top was made with blown sugar and the bases are all poured sugar, which Chef marbled with white colour and gold dust after pouring.

For our workshop, we had to put together a mock-up showpiece to test out how everything will work for the sugar exam next week. I found this class so much more fun than last week, now that I finally have a sketch drawn up. That being said, there were some elements to my sketch that really didn't turn out as expected.

The  biggest drawback to my winter themed showpiece was the fact that the blue dye only comes in powder form now, whereas last week we had liquid. (Somewhere in this school is an extremely blue cake.) So my dark blue base is almost black, and when I added the blue to my pulled sugar it resulted in a very gross grey colour. Not very appealing. Instead I made some "barbie" pink (as Chef H likes to call it) and had to make some other last minute colour change decisions. We're quite confined to the amount of colours we can use in our showpiece with the pulled sugar - three is the maximum. It makes sense after struggling first-hand to keep 3 colours at the right temperature under the heat lamp. But also the chefs will take off marks if we waste too much sugar. I'm going to compensate by colouring my pastillage leaves and flowers at home. One of the few things we can do to help prep for the exam and I am taking full advantage!

This is the finished piece. Not quite what I had in mind but good enough. I had more elements to add to it (more ribbon, curlicues, and snowflakes), but simply ran out of time. Hopefully the exam goes at least as well, if not better, next week. Fingers crossed.

Chocolate Candies

We continued this week's foray into the world of chocolate with a class dedicated to chocolate bonbons. I started drooling just looking at the recipe list. Chef H made a whopping 7 types of candies within 2 hours. That man is a machine! Luckily, we only had to churn out 5 types during our 5 hour workshop.

It wasn't too arduous a class. The biggest difficulty I encountered was trying to keep both my white and dark chocolate tempered. And then the filling of the chocolate molds proved a little trickier than expected. Those things are ridiculously heavy - you have to balance a thick plastic mold filled to the brim with chocolate in one hand while tapping the living daylights out of it with a spatula. The cherry on top of it all was the appearance of a cameraman to shoot some promotional footage for the school. He arrived just in time to see my struggle to dip candies in lumpy chocolate. I got so flustered I spilled white chocolate all across the floor. Not my finest moment in practical class. That's for sure.

The assortment of chocolates we made in class were absolutely divine. In front are Palets Or - coffee truffle filling flattened into discs and dipped in dark chocolate. The next are filled with hazelnut praline and crunchy feuilletine. My personal favourite are the green ones - white chocolate filled with pistachio and cinnamon cream. The squares are chocolate caramels that are chewy and completely melt in your mouth. The last are coffee marzipan squares partially dipped in chocolate.

I brought everything in to the office after class, as I could not trust myself in such close quarters with so much chocolate. I think I would gain 10 pounds this weekend alone! They were a great hit and it looks like I'll be getting a few orders in for Christmas. Have to get working on an order list very soon.

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.

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.

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: