Lemon Zebra Mousse with Strawberries.

I call it the Lemon zebra mousse with grand marnier strawberries.

My final examination in the Patisserie course is due next week. And the topic is: design you own cake. The ingredient list is short. No chocolate, only cocoa powder to use. The possible flavours are strawberry, lemon, 3 kinds of alcohol, pistachio paste and vanilla. Thus, also very possible that more than 1 person will make your cake.

Well, that was my first thought. The second thought was, how do I stand out? That was at the beginning of Superior patisserie. After that, I went through a sort of unhappy, down phase, where I lost myself amidst the crowd, I let myself be affected by what others think, by what others say. Basically, I lost my focus. I had a few ideas for my cake, bounced them around for some time, then discarding them one by one.

Then recently, something I did without thinking, I poured my confusion, my unease onto paper. All of a sudden I felt much better, lighter. I had direction again. The concept came easily, and from there, many little inspirations hopped into my head. Hmmm, it all starts to feel good again.

My cake is a very simple cake. Vanilla, chocolate genoise sponge, lemon mousse and strawberries. I want it really light and bubbly. haha. Stella says my cake feels like little children running and jumping for joy. I really like the zebra mousse. And I hope many people will like it too. I mean if you don't really like what you've made, how can you expect other people to enjoy it as well. So yeah, I really really like it. :)

We gave our cakes out to a variety of people to try. Our neighbours, R, N and their Japanese friend. Our classmates at French class with the majority of them Australian except for one English. The verdict was both of us did very well. They all liked both immensely but I got the majority of the votes. (haha, actually all but one) Which made me exceptionally happy~ This exercise made me very aware of consumers' taste and preference and how very important it is. And also very glad that we share the same taste.

The cake, as you can see in the pictures, is not finished. The last decorative touch is just too lazy on my part to execute. haha. Imagine very fine cake crumb, dark and light (the colours of my genoise), sifted alternately onto the cake to give a circular leaf motif design. So you see the dark, light and white colours contrasting. The last piping of "Happy Birthday" on the cake in clear glaze. (Not too sure about that, have to work that out.)

Comments please! :D The more the merrier. Thanks! It means great help.

End.

Decorative Breads- Dead dough

Dead dough, also known as bakers clay, is basically dough without yeast, or any leavening agent. Our task for the day is to produce at least 2 decorative bread pieces.

Chef Herve's demonstration. With a combination of normal bread dough and dead dough, he created this bouquet of wheat grass. This is super cool. You know, you have to cut and shape every single wheat you see there.... within the time that the normal bread dough below takes to prove. If you're too slow, the normal bread dough tends to explode, and you'll see little gaps here and there. Not good at all..

Crocodile. Chef says for some reason crocodiles look especially good in bread. The entire of the crocodile is made with the "live dough" (which is another name for the normal yeast dough). The fact that the dough is expanding all the time, makes it more difficult to shape. Especially for first-timers like us, we take more time to get the croc into shape. Let's say by the time the head is done, the tail will look a bit bulbous. Then you have to try to squash the air out, and roll the end more, to get the tapered off effect again.

So this is what happens. An obese crocodile which may very possibly be saddled with high cholesterol and diabetes.

Wheat sheaf is cool though. The middle piece is a porcupine. haha.

Better looking crocodile, but still looks over-fed.

Guess who made this. Stella. My roommate. She made this super huge owl with a mouse in its beak (though I don't think you can see it). Kimmy observed it and told me in a very calm manner: Heidi, I think you need to be careful. O.o

End.

Panetonne, Stollen and Foccacia

This whole week seems very Christmassy. 2 other Christmas items: Panetonne (Italy) and Stollen (France, Swiss, Germany, that Europe area). Oh, and Foccacia. One of my favourite bready!

This weeks's student helpers: Soo Jin and Heidi.

The panetonne made the day before and left in the fridge to be retarded. Baked and eaten on the second day. Nice, quite like the brioche except it has got lots of extra stuff like sultannas, dried fruits.

Stollen. A fruit bread stuffed with marzipan and baked together. I find this bread is quite similar to panetonne, but it has got much less butter and ofcourse this has marzipan.

Wrap, roll and seal. Then shape. bam bam bam.

After it is baked, you cut it like a pro with the bready knife. Chef Herve is demonstrating.

HOHOHO, foccacia. Chef says he finds it very close to the pizza dough except that this is much much thicker.

Topped with olives, basil, thyme and majoram.

End.

Gingerbread House

Christmas is coming! Theme for this week is The Gingerbread House~

First we make the gingerbread dough and pin it out into sheets to bake. After it is baked, we attempt to cut it into the shapes (roof, walls, chimney etc..) Then we make icing sugar (a combination of egg whites and icing sugar) as means to stick the pieces together. The sticks poking out from the gingerbread house are to hold them together before the icing dries. Looks quite scary huh, like some voodoo house (or so kimmy says).

We had such an excess of time during the lesson that we made honey lemon tea for the class. Waaaaa.

And time to idle around, to take many pictures..

From left: Efsun (Turkey), Eduardo (Venezuela), Stella (Philippines) and Kimmy (Indonesia).

Hong wants to stuff the pastry brush up Kimmy's nose to revenge Kimmy for sticking the brush in his eye.

Our Gingerbread House, decorated with icing sugar, candies and smarties.

Heidi's love nest.

Why love? There.

Il greco- Midtown cafe

Friday night is outing night! Whee~

While waiting for the bus, I got Stella to do a series of "AEIOU". She actually agreed! muahaha, now I have a couple of picture that I can blackmail her with.

Arriving at the cafe, which is located along George street, next to KFC. It's newly opened, I think. Very pretty deco inside, with shimmery lights and all. Banana smoothie!

The food: is not great. For the price, I would expect better standards. Pork and fennel sausages is $18. Just two sausages with a bunch of salas leaves. The steak was almost well-done although Stella asked for medium. My penne was too dry, very difficult to swallow. I gave up halfway. Only the smoked salmon and tomato bruchetta was satisfactory. ._.

Kimmy, the one who got us here for its seafood risotto, was also disappointed. Sam just look bored. He worked in an Italian restaurant before, so he must be bored by all these food. haha.

This is sooo cute! We found it at the basement Japanese supermarket, after dinner. Similar to the Japanese sweet store in Takashimaya in Singapore, this store makes them fresh.

Taiyaki in anpan man shape. haha. I'm spouting rubbish. Filled with pastry cream. I bought a box of 10 for $7, getting-rid-of-leftovers promotion. Which means these little men were probably seating around for quite some time, therefore not piping hot when we were eating it, but still good!

Because we were still hungry from the "blah" dinner, we hopped down to Chinatown to feast at their night market. I ate ba kwa!! hmmm...

End.

20 facts about myself

I was actually tagged by two people to do this- Sawee (aeons ago) and more recently Ja. Though Ja only asked for 7 facts, I shall do 20 since that was the original request (from Sawee), which will also overlapped with Ja's tag. I've been tagged.

20 (10 actually) facts about myself:

1. I love to eat. I have many various passions too but eating is the only one that has stuck with me for this long. So I guess it will most probably stay.

2. Which is why I am enrolled into Le Cordon Bleu, to learn how to turn the passion for food into something more exciting and practical. I am a soon-to-be patisserie graduate, whoot whoot!

3. I have a orange belt in Karate, which is probably moldy and faded.

4. I was in the school choir for 4 years, which won a gold award in my senior year. :D

5. I have a dog, who will make the perfect family dog, except that she attacks other dogs, refuses to eat dry dog food, sometimes jump on my bed and make a real big mess with her severe hair loss condition and uncontrolable saliva drooling, etc etc.

6. I have a pretty good grade in electone, except that I don't play like one. I think it was all a fluke. haha. Right now, I am bent on mastering piano. Huhwahwa.

7. I like to be happy. I really do. And I know I will be. Correction. I am, will be, will always be happy. (with minor exceptions here and there, otherwise, people might think me as positively unsound.)

8. I am learning French right now. Level 2. Ah merde! Je oublie mes devoirs!

9. I have a super cool mum, whom I love and will always love.

10. J'ai 19 ans et je suis celibataire. haha.

Wheww, I can't go on anymore. I don't have so many words about myself. This should be enough. I suppose I am to tag other people to pass on the good deed. Nah, I won't. haha. I would most probably tag the same people Sawee tagged. (I don't have many blogging friends) So yup, that's it. :D

Afternoon Tea

Okay! The high point of Superior patisserie: Afternoon Tea. It is an exercise that every patisserie student must go through. For this week, we made crepes, savarin, all kinds of petit fours for an afternoon tea service, served to real customers. In the ambassador room, tables are set up, food displayed prettily on platters, and us, we became front of house, kick-ass members. 2 of the girls went behind the bar to churn out coffee and cold beverages, 2 made crepes suzette as an open presentation (you can totally see the flames going up high when the grand marnier goes into the pan), the rest of us became the waitstaff.

"Those who can smile go behind the buffet counter." I volunteered. Haha, I figured it was the easiest job out of the three. Well, it was, until I found out how lonely it can be. Most customers are just eager to get the food on their plate rather than stopping to hear you lecture on about the cake. (I am sometimes like that too, so I can understand.)

We had tons of leftovers. I really really tried to sell my gateaux but no amount of coaxing can give the (miserable turn-out of) customers a second stomach. In the end, our class tried to polish the pastries off the trays either by insane, vengeful eating or take-away in makeshift doggy bag made out of disposable towels and plastic boxes. I had no appetite for either. There's something about leftovers just puts me off. o_o

Before the service, each of us had to make a crepe suzette each. First you melt sugar on the pan, on its own, until the sugar turns liquid. Then you add the butter. Very quickly, orange juice goes in. With a wedge of lemon, you clean the pan with it to dislodge any stray sugar. Next, add the crepes to soak in the nicely caramelised orange juice mixture. Now, the most important grand marnier is added to the edge of the pan, so that it can catch the fire. If you tilt the pan a little backwards, then you add the grand marnier to the top and quickly catch the fire, a tall flame will erupt. Spectacular. I reckon this is how I got my A. Because, frankly speaking, standing behind the counter, smiling blandly, won't get you many points. ._.

The crepes, made two days before the service. We've got many complaints for this one. Mr. Ivan said they were too thick to be French crepes. Thus during practice, we ate the thick ones ourselves. haha.

Savarin. It is a yeast product which is just plain weird. Good weird since it tastes so good. It has got the texture of a bread, sweetness of a cake. My brain cannot make the connection. Luckily, my brain knows my tongue likes it. Finished like a cake with creme chantilly and fruits.

Les Macaroons et Les chocolat- contributed by the various Chefs.

Danish pastries- donated by Intermediate patisserie.

Sable boutin (I hope I got this right) and lemon meringue tartlets- made by us.

Sugar showpiece by Chef Herve, to impress our customers he says.

Thank god it is over. Sure it was fun but trying as well. I didn't pee for long periods.

End.