Week 8: Cake and More Cake

It's been all about cakes this week, starting with the Gateau St Honore. It's a combination of pate brisee, pate de choux, caramel, and creme patissiere. I garnished mine with toasted almonds and crystallised violets. I was actually really pleased with how it came out! I just need to make my choux a bit smaller and make my piping more slanted for a more defined chevron pattern.

 

I really enjoyed making this cake as it tests a lot of the pastry making skills we should have by now and it's also an exercise in time management since you're constantly bouncing back and forth from all the different elements.

The next cake we had was the charlotte aux cassis, which is a cake with blackcurrant Bavarian mousse and a blackcurrant glacage with white chocolate piping. We watched as the chef demonstrated all the different borders that we could pipe on our cakes, and we were all depressed. Piping with chocolate is hard!

Luckily, mine turned out not as badly as I anticipated. Whew. My piping could still definitely use work, but I didn't feel the need to tear my hair out in frustration, which is a big improvement over earlier attempts!

We had a bit of a scare in the kitchen during this practical. In order to remove the cake from its mold, it's necessary to lightly blowtorch the metal mold. Can you see where I'm going with this? We have a bit of a Disaster Jane in our class, and she ended up blow torching a piece of parchment paper that went up in flames. Instead of tamping the fire out, she tried to put it out by blowing on it! Um, not a candle! My partner and I ended up pushing her aside to put the flames out, and I approached her carefully to turn the blowtorch off, which she had on this whole time. Geez.

Better luck next week!