Treats for the Prayer Ministry Team

On Easter Sunday, the leader of the Prayer Ministry Team at my church told me that they're having a prayer time/meeting the following Sunday...and was wondering if I could make some treats for all the participants?

Of course I would!

As a matter of fact, there was this one cookie that I've always wanted to try making--a prayer cookie.  I was envisioning hand-shaped shortbread cookies encasing a buttercream filling.  It will look like praying hands with creamy filling--or a hand-shaped Oreo.  And it was the perfect opportunity to try this out.

I made the basic chocolate shortbread dough, rolled it out and used the hand-shaped cookie cutter to cut these out.  I had to flip the cutter on the other side to make the opposite hand (since they're mirror-images of each other).

I made a peanut butter cream filling for these.  The result?

It tasted good, just like your regular chocolate-peanut butter sandwich cookie.  The fingers on the cutter is shorter (in proportion) than the average human hand, so it looked a bit funny/unnatural.  I was a bit disappointed (being the perfectionist that I am...) but the Prayer Ministry Team loved it!  They said the treats made the meeting/prayer time very much memorable.  As long as they're happy, I'm happy :)
Guess I'll just call these... Prayer-eos?

Marzipan class at La Bonne Vie...and Happy Easter!!

On Wednesdays before Easter, we (well, it was mostly just me) held a marzipan-modeling class for children.  I've never worked with marzipan before (because #1 I don't like them and #2 they're expensive), so Chef gave me some marzipan for me to practice with.

Marzipan is basically a mixture of fondant and almond paste.  The result is a mass very much like Play-Doh.

Since it's Easter, I made a bunny and a chick....

Not too shabby for my first time playing with them.  But then again, I've worked with Play-Doh in the past so this was a no-brainer.

An hour before the class started, I made a big batch of white marzipan, separated a few chunks and dyed those in several colors.

I carted the blobs of colored marzipan, a few sample pictures, and gold boards for the kids to La Bonne Vie.
The kids had a blast playing with the marzipan!  Some made a caterpillar...

Some made an orange panda (I didn't make a whole lot of black marzipan).

Some were pretty detailed and elaborate, like this owl here.

I was told that this whole event is a set of two classes, with maximum of four kids (must be 6 to 12 years old) per session.  At least that what it's supposed to be.  Well, the first class went fine, four kids showed up, just as planned.  At the second class, however, four families showed, bringing their six kids.  And we only allowed six kids because two more mothers showed up, bringing their three kids...and any more than six would've turned the dainty little French pastry shop into a chaotic preschool.  So we had to ask the two mothers to wait another 45 minutes for the second class to be over...and I ended up teaching a third class, with two mothers and three 3-yr. olds (note the age requirement mentioned earlier).  I was exhausted...but everyone had so much fun they asked if we're doing this again next year.

For my private Easter fun, I made chocolate moai monoliths using a silicone mold.

They're statues from the Easter Island...get it??  I made two kinds, one is filled with oozy brandy-caramel, and the other is rum-raisin ganache, upon Mom's request.  They were pretty delish.  So that was how I spent the Holy Week.  Happy Easter everyone!

Macaron Help

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine (a former classmate from culinary school) whom I haven't seen or talked to in a while, contacted me--she needed help with the macarons.

She is now a chef instructor at a local grocery megastore, and had wanted to have a macaron making class...except apparently, she has NEVER been able to successfully make macarons in the past.  After many failed attempts, she had quit making them six months ago, out of sheer frustration.  But she finally decided to give the macarons a try--and enlisted my help to do it.

We set up a macaron-baking date at her workplace.  When I got there, I was mesmerized by all the shiny, fancy equipment she had. 

This is what the classroom looked like.  The glass door on the far end is the entrance/exit.

A huge, industrial fridge on the left side...

The back end, where the chef instructor stands.  The shelves contain spices, herbs, about four Cuisinart stand mixers.

What's really cool about these cabinets is that the doors open upward instead of sideways.  Unlike those with doors that swing out sideways, these hatchback cabinets will definitely prevent someone from banging their heads on the doors--as I myself have done before, and ended up with a nasty bump on my skull.

Anyway, back to the real issue at hand--the macarons.  We used the recipe from our textbook, which involves making a French meringue--the easiest, the least intensive method.  Since she wants to teach this class to people with (probably) no culinary background, we decided to opt for this recipe.

I asked her what was exactly wrong with her macarons.  She said that they "just didn't look right".

...All righty then. Guess we'll follow the recipe step-by-step and see how they turn out.  

After I piped them out, I told her that we now have to let them rest for at least 20 minutes, to which she asked why.  When I explained to her that it's the resting that gives macs their characteristic smooth shell/domes, she...looked a bit aghast.  Turned out she never did that, which totally explained why her macs never turned out right!

After the resting period, we popped them into the ovens.  By habit, I am wary of ovens I've never used before, since every oven is different.  We ended up with two sheet pans, so as an experiment, we put one in a non-convection oven and the other in a convection oven.

Halfway through the baking time, we took a peek...

It's working!  We both (almost) squealed in delight.  We compared the results between the convection vs. non-convection oven.  The convection oven had better results;  the non-convection oven caused the bottom to cook faster, and the macs ended up with dark foot.

The feet got a little big, but the texture was spot on.  The meringue would've been a bit more stable if we had used fresh egg whites instead of from the carton, but it's OK.
We whipped up a small batch of vanilla buttercream and filled them.

My friend was very happy that her macs finally turned out good!  Her daughter loves them, so she was more than happy to take home the vast majority of them--I took only one, to give to my mom.  It is kind of unfortunate that my family is not a huge fan of macarons... :P

Valentine's Day Recap

Once Christmas is over, Valentine's Day comes in with vengeance.  These are the Valentine's Day themed treats we made for La Bonne Vie.

First up, Blackberry Macarons (which I lovingly refer to as "the Big Macs")

Giant macarons filled with cream cheese filling and blackberries.
Next, the Chocolate Mousse Domes....

Chocolate mousse, with vanilla creme center, chocolate chiffon cake base, finished with an uber-shiny chocolate glaze.  If you look closely, you can actually see my reflection on one of the domes.
The usual chocolate-dipped strawberries got dressed up with pink hearts.  I gave the other design a modern and classy/chic look.

And of course, a Valentine's Day inspired flavor macarons--Red Velvet.  A bit of cocoa powder and lots of red powder dye gave it the intense color it needed.  These are then filled with cream cheese filling.  The pink hearts are separate batter dyed pink then piped on before baking.

These are our members for now--Raspberry cream puffs, Lemon Chiffon, Strawberry tarts, Red Velvet cupcakes, and Fruit Strips.  Our menu is constantly shifting and changing according to season.  In a sense, it's annoying, but at the same time challenging and keeps everything interesting.

Holiday Recap--Christmas goodies at La Bonne Vie

During the holiday season, we had a special limited-edition Christmas pastries at La Bonne Vie.

We had vanilla and chocolate eclairs decorated with cute spun sugar toadstool.

And what's Christmas without a Buche du Noel? These are filled with rich praline creme, slathered with hazelnut buttercream and cut into individual portions.

 On top of the insane amount of macarons--of our usual flavors--that we had to make, we also had the holiday limited-edition macaron flavors.  These are the Eggnog macarons, filled with eggnog buttercream and sprinkled with a bit of nutmeg.  I used eggnog compound and *ahem* dark rum to make it extra noggy.

And these are bicolored Peppermint macarons;  both the shells and the filling contains peppermint flavoring.  These were for a special order--and hopefully I won't have to make them any more.  This flavor requires a double-batch batter, with one white and the other colored pink.  The batters are placed separately in two small pastry bags, then placed in a large one--so you get two different colored bags together in one bag.
This results in bicolored macs.  Unfortunately, this also resulted in an overstuffed pastry bag that my tiny hands had to strain to squeeze and pipe.

I was pretty certain that I'll be getting arthritis or carpal tunnel after I was done...
But they turned out absolutely beautiful!

Peppeminty pink-and-white swirly perfection!  The customers were very happy!
Other new pastries includes these Raspberry Financiers.  The base is hazelnut financiers filled with pastry cream, then topped with raspberries.  The whole thing is glazed with apricot gel (it helps "glue" everything together and also prevents the fruits from drying out), and finished with snow sugar and pistachios.

When chef made these first, they looked awfully familiar...then upon some Google search, I found some Parisian pastry shops that sell something very similar.  Not only that, these types of pastries are actually quite common in Paris.  It's been a few months since we started selling these, and they are kinda-sorta-maybe popular.  There are days when these disappear pretty quickly, and then other days when they don't sell at all;  it's really hard to predict.  The only that has been constantly selling really well are the macarons. :P

The Holidays recap--Grand America gingerbread house

Wow, has it been really four months since I wrote last?  I have just been extremely busy, and my laptop getting infected with some gnarly viruses didn't help either.  In my last post, I have mentioned that the holiday season is going to be like the passing of a hurricane.  Well...that was an understatement.

It felt more like an Armageddon.

Everyday was 13 to 14 hour-shift, and over one hundred reservations for the hotel's High Tea became the norm.  I mean, the paycheck was nice and plump, but physically I was very much drained.  My hands were starting to develop arthritis/carpal tunnel from piping out an INSANE. NUMBERS. OF. MACARONS.
It was getting to the point where we were making at least two batches every day.  I kid you not.

But other than the crazy work hours, the holidays are very eventful and fun!  We have a tradition of making a large gingerbread house for display every Christmas.  This year, the new exec pastry chef took things to the next level--he designed and built a life-sized gingerbread house.  When completed, this thing was large enough to accommodate several people (as long as they were under 5'10" in height)...

The gingerbread house required a wooden frame to support its massive structure.  Then planks after planks of real gingerbread were staple-gunned to the frame.
This is one of the sides of the house during construction.

And just to show how huge this thing is, I took a pic of one of the workers laying gingerbread shingles on the roof.  Apparently, this gentleman is a former roofer before he got into the culinary field.

Of course, a house must have windows!  The windows for this house was made from sugar, cast inside a wooden frame.

The interior was laid out with slabs of rice Krispy treats for flooring and colorful chocolate truffles, gumballs, and candy canes for wall decor.

 
Then right by the window was a toy elf indulging on macarons...which, by the way, are real, made by none other than me and my coworker.  We were wondering where the heck some of our supply disappeared to.

 
The finished house.  Yes, it's massive, it's cool, pretty....but alas, the colored windows made it really hard to see the inside.  And what's the point of decorating the interiors if no one can even see it?
And here are the stats for this house.  We ended up using a whopping 1200 lbs. of flour, 400 lbs. of sugar, 1200 eggs, 160 qts. of molasses, 800 lbs. of powdered sugar, 200 lbs. of rice Krispy treats, 200 lbs. of isomalt, and 25 lbs. of chocolate!

And what did we do with it after the holidays?  Apparently the whole thing went into garbage.  Yep.  It was heart-wrenching.  It was painful.  I even suggested that we summon a bunch of children to make their Hansel and Gretel fantasy come true (what kid wouldn't want to chow down on a life-sized gingerbread house??). But alas, it was carted out and was never seen again...

Witch's High Tea at the Grand America

Happy belated Halloween to everyone!  During the week leading up to Halloween, we hold a special event called the Witch's Tea.  Instead of our usual tea pastries, we serve Halloween-themed goodies.

 

First up, Gingerbread zombies...

...with half of its head and leg bitten off.
We also made crispy meringue spiderwebs, then dipped them in chocolate.

 

Next year, maybe we can try piping out skeleton's claws??

 

We also made gravestone cookies--chocolate shortbread cookies sandwiched with chocolate mousse, just like chocolate-creme oreos.

For our entremet, we made blood orange mousse layered with joconde.  It is then finished with cocoa butter spray.  Originally, we decorated them with crossbones, but we special ordered some Halloween sugar decorations...

...and the results were much cuter. 
I didn't take a picture, but in addition to the above, there were Chocolate "ooze" cupcakes (chocolate cupcakes with raspberry jam filling, with purple frosting), cranberry-orange scones, and pate de fruit dusted with poprocks instead of sugar.  Because of this special event, the number of reservation had skyrocketed during this time, forcing me and my partner to stay longer hours.  We were both pretty drained after this whole ordeal.  Inbetween now and Thanksgiving is the time to (somewhat) catch up and relax a bit.  Cuz the holidays, I've heard, is going to be like an arrival of a hurricane...