Le Fraisier, Raspberry mousse, Tiramisu, Sacher torte

The last intermediate patisserie.

Intermediate is coming to an end. Which means we all go up to the more difficult and interesting territory of Superior, playing with even more chocolate and sugar. It is exhilarating but to tell the truth, I am scared. The teachers whom I am already so familiar with are not going with us. I am not sure if there is going to be a friendly voice to spur you on, I am not sure if there is going to be witty humour to tickle you when you need it the most. But I am positive that everything is going to change. Big time.

Le Fraisier, translate to The Strawberry literally in French. It is a strawberry cake made with genoise sponge and mousseline cream. I don't like the fact that the top of the cake is traditionally covered in marzipan. Who likes marzipan? It is freaking almond meal and icing sugar with lots of preservatives. Eew. Strawberry cake is good though. -By Chef Micheal.

Raspberry mousse gateau. The long thin strip is a joconde layered with tuile mix, then we bake them together on a patterned mat, you'll get this beautiful design. Cool eh. That strip is used to line the tin, and the inside is filled with raspberry mousse and topped with a raspbery glace. Tadah! -by Chef Karen

Tiramisu. We made every part of the cake. Sponge fingers included. The school's recipe is very different from the one I had. It taste so much sweeter and has a much smoother texture. See the butterfly? I piped it! Pretty? -By me.

Sacher torte, an Austrian cake. To me, it is the ultimate chocolate cake. It is like eating real couverture with cake. The flavours blend so well that you don't really know if you are having chocolate or cake. Yeah, I like. -By me.

Tiramisu. -By Chef Andre.

A class shot with our favourite teacher, who is going on to be the Head Chef! in the coming term. I am happy for him. :D

End.

Chocolate macaroons, piped shortbread, biscotti, brasilia gateau.

People! Guess what, I passed my exams! yeeeeehaaaaaa! Not with top marks I am sure (since I messed up my anglaise) but hey, life is still good. (I am desperately in need of consolation though...)

Monday: Macaroons, piped shortbread and biscotti.

Piped shortbread dipped in chocolate. And when you bite into it, it should melt in your mouth. What heaven.

Brasillia gateau which has nothing to do with
Brasil. It consist of joconde, caramel buttercream in layers and lastly decorated with nougatine. Chef Karen's version.

My version. At the very last moment of decorating the cake, did I realise I cut my nougatine the wrong way. The nougatine pieces won't fit in together, hence the lop-sided design.

End.

Ice-creams, Sorbet and Biscuits

I am tired. I have traveled many miles to drop my resume in 7 Patisseries today. It is a mad rush to get all the papers printed and ready. Worse still, the school's printer wouldn't take my mac format. So I had to type it all out today for the second time. Such luck.

Anyway, I am getting into shape. Slowly. I can run 2km without much effort but at a crawling speed. I would fail NAPFA miserably running this slowly. 20mins per 2km. Haha, one wonders how I pass my NAPFA with a Silver, no less. Gosh, I am pathetic. Nonetheless, I am very serious about loosing enough weight and body mass to fit into my Spring clothes. Which is about now, so Aileen, watch out!

This week's lesson on ice-creams and biscuits. Ice-creams have always been something mysterious and exciting for me. Until now. Right now, ice-cream is something that melts and stain your bag like crazy sort of irritating product. We made classic vanilla ice-cream, chocolate ice-cream and raspberry sorbet. For ice-creams, first, you make the anglaise, then you churn it, then viola! You have ice-cream!

I don't quite like our school's ice-cream recipe. I expected a richer and more textured ice-cream, not the sweet, super-smooth, almost commercial-like version. I was not very happy with it. Plus I have a one year supply of them sitting in my freezer. One year supply of not very good ice-cream. ._.

With the ice-creams we made, we wrapped them in sponge layers and meringue discs, and piped Italian meringue over. Then we torch it to give some colour. This we call Norwegienne Omelette. People in Norway eat this for breakfast.

In the Vacherin (meringue) shells, we canele ice-creams to put into the shells and we decorate with whatever that goes with ice-creams.

Also using Vacherin discs, ice-creams are sandwiched in-between and whipped cream is used to mask and decorate the exterior.

Our ice-creams.

My Omelette.

The biscuit (filler) lesson.

End.

Croquembouche, L'Opera gateau

Croquembouche is a traditional French wedding cake that is made of profiteroles filled with pastry cream built on a nougatine or short pastry base. Caramel (France) or chocolate (Italy) is used as a sticking agent.

L'Opera gateau is a moist, dense, layered Frech cake traditionally made from jaconde, coffee buttercream and dark ganache.

This has been a very tense week for me. And for everyone else in the class I guess. Croquembouche and Opera gateau. Two very tricksy, fiddly pieces. And you know what, I didn't even complete building my croquembouche. After all the bleeding preparation of making profiteroles, pastry cream and nougatine base, I gave up at the third ring. Problem was, my caramel was too thin, hence the choux balls cannot stick together properly. I had leaning tower of Pisa at stage three which will actually proceeded to completely lean over if I hadn't had my hand supporting it. Well, time ran out so my teacher said she will assess me based on my choux balls and caramel. Luckily I did those well. So yeah, 35/40. haha.

L'opera gateau, my end-term examination topic. That is the main reason why the whole class is so tense. We cannot afford to do a lousy job since it will be the only practice we get. Chef Andre's not-so-perfect Opera, or so he says. Take a look at my Opera. That is called imperfect.

Opera gateau as plated desserts. I personally prefer the one on your left. So cute!!!

Ahh, the runny Opera. The intermediate layers are all alright. The only fault is I made my glaze too thin, which is a major major fault because it is so obviously obvious. My for-all-to-see glaze can't even hold its shape. haha. On the bright side, it tastes good. :D

End.

Breads

I am too stoned to type anything now. So pictures and captions for now.

Vegetable bread. Spinach, capsicum, mushrooms, carrots and grated cheese. By Chef Micheal.

This is the inside. You can see the vegetables are not very well dispersed.

Yup, so he taught us another way of making the vegetable bread. The end result: Monster bready. Yes, the vegetables are all over the bread dough but it does look like Martian bread. Do Martians eat bread?

30% wholemeal bread in pagnotta (cob) and ring shape.

Tuesday lesson, Lavosh bread. It is more of a cracker than anything.Ciabatta that is pre-made the day before.

Our proving Ciabattas.

Grissini. Italian bread sticks.

Wednesday, French sour loaf (baguette), babs and fruit loaf. Chef Andre was so kind to bring the port jam that he made at home. :D

End.

Baklava, hotcross buns, apple strudel, danish pastries, donuts.

I am not getting enough sleep. I am totally not getting enough sleep. It is the dead of winter now. And it is only healthy that people sleep more during winter. Dragging yourself out of bed 6:30 in the morning in the freaking cold is no fun, not healthy. It takes away your alertness, dulls your focus, makes you irritable and almost semi-retarded for most of the day. I was semi-retarded today. I woke up at 6:30am so that I could make it in time for my French lesson at 9am in town. My four hour long French lesson. It is almost like my Biology lecture. Oui? No actually, French is more interesting.

Anyway, I am lagging in the picture updates. For this week, we had baklava, hot cross buns, apple strudel, danish pastries and donuts. I really like this week's products. Very refreshing. Especially baklava. I never even dreamed about making those in my entire life. And next thing I knew, I was making baklava even better than the ones in those specialty shops. Next week will be even better. Breads. Oh, how I miss breads.

Baklava or baklawa is a rich, sweet pastry featured in many cuisines of the former Ottoman (Turkey) and Iranian countries. It is a pastry made of layers of filo dough filled with chopped walnuts or/and pistachios and sweetened with syrup or honey. There, all these are made in class. I have never truly appreciated baklava until this day. It taste so wonderful when you make them right and eat them fresh.

Hot cross buns. Seriously, I think there is something lacking in our school's recipe for hot cross buns. Hot cross buns in Singapore tastes so much better. And it is Singapore you know.

Apple strudel. The very traditional one where the apple filling is encased and baked in very thin, large piece of rolled pastry dough, until it is all mushy inside. Eew. I prefer the modern puff pastry apple strudel. The non-authentic version that we have in Singapore. That tastes so much better.

Donuts! Real artisan hand rolled donuts. What a pity that it is for demonstration only. Eat with pastry cream and jam.

Danish pastries. Ermm, just ignore the background. Focus on the pastries.

End.

Plated Desserts

I am going to blog after all- I have just too much time. heehee.

I have decided not to work just yet. I will concentrate on gaining as much knowledge and skills as I can for now. Continuing with my French lessons is a sure thing since I have already signed up for it. I also plan to take up driving and martial arts. Hopefully Aikido. I am very interested in Aikido. haha. We'll see.

This week's lesson in on plated desserts. Souffle, baravois, raspberry mousse, panna cotta, self-saucing chocolate pudding, we made as mains. Creme anglaise, raspberry coulis, chocolate sauce and strawberry and pineapple mint salsa for garnish. Below are some of the desserts my chefs demonstrated.

I can seriously imagine beautiful, appetising, wow-ing desserts in my head. But when I translate it into real world, they look like this: -_-

And Chef Andre says: imagination is your limit. I do agree with him but you do need a certain amount of skill to execute your ideas, don't you.

End.

Linzer Torte, Blueberry & Raspberry Almond Flan, St. Honore, Tart au Chocolat Noir

Linzer Torte is a famous Austrian pastry that is called a "torte" but is actually a tart filled with raspberry jam. It is a very dry style pastry and is often served for afternoon tea.

Monday lesson: Linzer torte and Tart aux Fruits Rouge. Translation: Linzer torte on your left is explained on the above. Tart aux fruit rouge is basically a pastry base baked with almond cream (frangipane) filled with pastry cream and decorated with raspberries and blueberries, traditionally. But because our stupid school is always finding ways to cut costs, they gave us the comparatively cheaper strawberries for decorations instead. Then, because the strawberries in Australia are not in season, we got strawberries from giant land, namely America. In conclusion, our tart aux fruit rouge turned out fine. :D

Linzer torte and Tart aux fruit rouge, by Chef Micheal. I realised, only after eating, that I didn't take pictures for my tarts. Owells.

Tuesday lesson was Gateau St. Honore, a famous pastry that was originated in France. Gateau St. Honore is primarily made up of creme chibouste, choux pastry and puff pastry. Chef Karen made some spun sugar to go on with it.

The difficult part of this gateau is in the creme chibouste, i find. Even with added whipped cream, the shape couldn't hold well. And it is super duper sweet. Anyway, this is what I rushed out in 3 and 1/2 hours.

Wednesday, Chef Andre finished the white chocolate fudge, and made tart au chocolat noir which is dark chocolate tart in English. The dark chocolate tart is my current favourite! Below: white chocolate fudge.

Dark chocolate tart with raspberry, by Chef Andre.

Plated dark chocolate tart, by chef Andre.

Mine.

Mine. Mine. Mine!

End.