Intro to Pastry Week Final

Intro to Pastry Week Final!!

Well, it's here folks....the Final Project. Each of us drew a lottery on the components required in our plated dessert. I got shortbread base, ganache filling, French buttercream frosting, fresh fruit (for garnish), and caramel sauce. Oh boy. This one's gonna be hard. The only dessert I could think of that had shortbread with ganache filling was a chocolate tart. And it had to have a buttercream frosting to go with it?? On top of that, it had to be something that can be frozen for a week. The instructor set it up so that the prep day and the plating day was 1 week apart. In other words, we had to make everything on the prep day, freeze it, and then plate it a week later. Annoying, yes. And some of the pastry elements, such as pastry cream, tend to liquify during the freezing process.

I searched high and low online for pictures of chocolate tart that had frosting on it, to no avail. Finally, I decided to layer the tart with an additional element to make something that resembled a torte. Since the oranges are in season, I thought about making something orange and chocolate. OK...how about an orange mousse layered with chocolate ganache tart? The mousse wasn't one of the required elements, but the Instructor said that it's OK to incorporate extra elements into the desserts...but that I can get graded on it too. I thought that was fine, without thinking too much about it.With that picture in mind, I went to go take my final...

Things seemed to go pretty well at first. Shortbread was easy, the French buttercream, while tedious, wasn't too hard...except mine turned out a bit soft, but it tasted great. Then I made the orange mousse. I creamed mascarpone with grand marnier and heavy cream, placed it into a container and froze it. BIG MISTAKE. The following week, I took out the mousse. I didn't notice at first, but as it thawed out, it turned into this grainy mousse. It still tasted great, but the texture was NOT GOOD. At this point, I was already assembling everything, and didn't have time to make fresh mousse, so I went ahead and piped it in, put a chocolate sheet on it, piped the buttercream...and hoped for the best. And I am still beating myself up over the mousse (Oh why, WHY did I have to pipe that horrible mousse in???)

This is the dessert that 'B' in my group came up with. Sort of a deconstructed Black Forest Cake, with frozen cherry sherbet cup thingy. The four judges gave him a pretty good score...

A dessert by 'R', another guy in my group. Chocolate genoise layered with vanilla pastry cream, with wine-poached pear gelee and tuile decorations. I think he did pretty well also...

...And here's mine. Orange-Chocolate Layer Tart with French buttercream and caramel sauce. I scored lower than 'B'! When I looked over the score paper, I saw that three of the judges said that my buttercream was "grainy", while one said that it was "perfect!"... I was confused. How is it that one group thought the buttercream was grainy and the other thought it was perfect?? Especially when the cream came from the same batch??? Then it hit me...the only one who knew that I was making an orange mascarpone mousse was the Instructor; the others had no idea. The three judges must've thought that the orange mascarpone mousse was the buttercream!! There was no other way to explain why they thought my buttercream was grainy!

Here's what happened. When I handed the dessert to the judges, I just said the name of the dessert...and didn't really describe what was in it. And yes, I am beating myself up over that. All I had to do was to explain that the buttercream was the cream on top of the dessert and not the layer in the middle! arrrrrgghhh....

So lessons learned:

#1 Remember to really explain the plate! That's why there's a description by every dish on the menu!

#2 Glaze every fruit (and I mean every fruit). The judges thought my orange segments looked "dry and old". I was confused over that too...I just barely cut a fresh orange for those! How could they "look old"?? I guess that's their way of saying, "glaze the fruit".

#3 Don't incorporate an unnecessary element into the final project, cuz it will count against me. They don't take extra credits for extra effort during the final.

So that was the final. I'm not happy with the score, and somewhat disappointed in myself. But hey, what can I do but just keep going?

Now that the winter break's here, I can concentrate on other things. Like, making Christmas goodies for instance.

My mom and I wanted to send a Christmas gift to our relatives in Japan...but what to send them? Japan has everything, from McDonald's to Godiva, from Pokemon to Powerpuff Girls. So we sent them something that even Japan doesn't have...handmade chocolate truffles.

I made hazelnut truffles using Nutella as filling. After chilling it in the fridge, I formed a ball of it around toasted hazelnut, coated it in crushed wafer crumbs, and froze it. The entire thing was dipped in melted chocolate and rolled in chopped hazelnuts (except I ran out midway, and substituted pistachios).

I need to work on shaping them into better-looking spheres.... but they turned out delicious. We packaged them into pretty boxes and sent them to both my aunts and my sister.

There was one other experimental dessert I wanted to try: the Black Pearl Torte, a.k.a. Black sesame torte. It consists of layers of black sesame cake filled with black sesame buttercream. I used the black sesame powder found at a local Chinese food store...

...and I utilized the buttercream leftover from the final. Paired with orange sauce, it tasted pretty good. I took a small sample to work. The Sous Chef, Eleanor, really liked the taste, but she thought the looks was too scary....grey cake with grey cream? But when I told her that black sesame dessert is all the craze in places like New York and San Francisco, she agreed that we should definitely think about incorporating it into our dessert menu. In Utah, we are way behind when it comes to current trends. When a trend originates in NY and San Fran, it takes about 5 years for it to finally get here. So we both figured that the black sesame craze will arrive in a few years. Why not get started now? We discussed the issue, and thought about glazing the cake with ganache...Hmmm this is definitely worth brainstorming....

And speaking of our dessert menu, here are our current desserts at Naked Fish:

Gelato Profiterole. Well, we discontinued this one. It just wasn't selling. Chef Toshi left to go open his own restaurant up in Park City, so he maybe serving this at his place.

The Eggnog Cheesecake, available until December 24th. Served with Caramel sauce, this cake sells faster than the Green Tea Cheesecake...but probably because it's limited edition.

Bananas Foster. Our second most popular dessert. Flambeed bananas served with vanilla ice cream and house-made (by me!) chocolate sauce.

And then, our Number One best-seller....

The Mocha Trifle, served with a tuile cigar cookie. Last Friday, there were 8 in the fridge. They were all gone by Saturday night. Call me crazy, but I always get these warm, fuzzy feeling when Eleanor calls and informs me that the restaurant is completely out of desserts... :)

Intro to Pastry Week 9

Happy belated Thanksgiving! I swear, weeks fly by so quickly these days...it's almost two weeks into December already! Well, here's the much-awaited update...
For Thanksgiving, we invited our friends, Toshi and Setsuko for our family tradition of Bible-reading marathon, where we read the Bible passage out loud for approximately 2 hours (we take breaks), and a dinner. Nothing special for dinner, just oden, a Japanese pot-au-feu type of dish. The dessert, however, was quite special...

Peach Mille Feuille, using the peaches from farmer's market that we canned during summer months. The puff pastry was the leftover from previous week's class (remember the vol-au-vent?). With the puff pastry, I made another dessert...

Deconstructed Apple Pie. Puff pastry leaf, apple compote (using the apples from our backyard!) and dried cranberry compote. Designed for those who prefer the higher ratio of the apples to the crust.

Then on to the Week 9 of Intro to Pastry...at this point, there aren't any new recipes. We are now building up on everything that we've learned so far. The syllabus/schedule simply stated, "Fraisir Torte" and "Baked Alaska". Fraisir Torte is a layered cake with spongecake and strawberry mousse or cream filling, with sliced strawberries embedded in the cream. There were four people in my group: R, T, me...and M again. Although M was actually quite cooperative and easier to work with this time. T wanted to do the Fraisir Torte, M volunteered to do the Baked Alaska (it's the easiest one to do...), R had this "dream" of twisting a panna cotta into a twirly shape, and I had in mind...a Chevre Cake (a.k.a. Goat Cheese Cake).

Here's what happened. Earlier in the week, a few of my classmates in my Menu Management class told me how their baking class ran out of cream cheese...so I suspected that the exact same thing will happen in my class as well. In which case, I thought about other cheeses that I could substitute--that can be mascarpone, ricotta, cottage cheese (heaven forbid) ...and goat cheese. I've seen the recipe for it online, and also thought about maybe making it at Naked Fish. I know, a Japanese restaurant that carries goat cheese, right? Unfortunately, the cheese is used on, and only on, salad. That's it. Why not fully utilize what the restaurant carries? So I've always wanted to make a Goat Cheese Cake, but alas, it is expensive, around $5 for a 4 oz. block (the recipe requires 12 oz) and I wasn't about to spend $15 on something that may turn out gross.

So that was what went on in my mind when I proposed the plan to others. And to my delight, we were indeed out of cream cheese...but had a tub of goat cheese! There were only about 8 oz, so I substituted 4 oz. ricotta. The recipe I followed is designed to make an Italian souffle style cheesecake. Here are our products...

T's Fraisir Torte with Strawberry Sauce. The "doughy"-looking thing on top is marzipan. It was OK...

M's Baked Alaska, with caramel sauce. He followed my suggestions on making a chocolate cake base with coffee ice cream for it. Despite its looks, it was quite tasty.

R's Dream. Poor R. He tried twisting the panna cotta strip, but it was too stiff to hold its shape.

My Goat Cheesecake with Cranberry-Fig compote and Madeira Wine Sauce. The texture was so fluffy and light! As for the taste...got mixed reviews. Only those who liked goat cheese really liked it, and those who didn't thought it was gross. I was surprised Dad liked it. Mom wasn't a big fan, she thought it was too "goat cheese-y".

Then I took it to Naked Fish for a sampling. Oh my. Turns out every cooks/chefs LOVE goat cheese. They thought the cake was phenomenal. They suggested I make it for an omakase customer, whose palate would be sophisticated enough to appreciate goat cheese.

Over the weekend, we went grocery shopping at a Chinese market in downtown. I spotted something labeled "sweet yam" that looked suspiciously like the Japanese sweet potato. I begged my mom to get one, just for a taste--if it tastes good, great, if not, we only wasted two dollars. We ate it that night, and yep....it was the Japanese sweet potato! We had two, so I used the other one to make a sweet yam cream. With that, I made...

Mont Fuji. Japanese rendition of the Mont Blanc. This French entremet is traditionally made using chestnut cream. The sweet yam made it much lighter and creamier than the traditional version. The base is an angel food cake I had baked earlier in the week.

This week was the finals in Intro to Pastry...I'll update as soon as it's over...

Intro to Pastry Week 6 & 7

Intro to Pastry Week 6 & 7

The last few weeks have been a blur--with the downtown convention, the restaurant got swamped. We went through the cheesecake and the trifle rather quickly, but things settled down...and we're back to being very slow. I've learned to pace the dessert-making so there will be a steady supply of fresh desserts--that way, there will be enough for service, but not so much that they end up not getting consumed and have to be thrown out.

About two weeks ago, I baked a sample Eggnog Cheesecake w/Gingerbread crust for the upcoming holiday. Everyone loved it! So far, I've come up with eggnog cream puffs, eggnog trifle, eggnog creme brulee, kabocha pumpkin trifle, kabocha cheesecake...the list goes on. But it's all up to the owner's decision...and he had better make that decision quick. Once we're past Thanksgiving, the holiday chaos will arrive, and then we'll have only one month to serve them.

So that's what's been going on at work...

Here's the recap from Week 6. This week, we learned about puff pastry. It's one of those pastry elements that everyone finds very intimidating. I was kinda scared myself. But once I got my hands down and dirty, it wasn't as bad as I thought.

One of our products, done by J. Frangipane Torte with Dried Fruit Compote and pomegranate sauce. A nice, winter-themed dessert!

Done by N. Coconut Panna Cotta with Raspberry and Lime Sauce. He substituted coconut milk for the cream in the recipe, but didn't taste like coconut at all.

Done by G. Raspberry Napoleon Cake. Both he and I did our own puff pastry dough, just to get the experience. He wanted to do the Napoleon cake (i.e. layers of puff pastry and cream), so I did the vol-au-vent (i.e. cup-shaped puff pastry). Being the overachiever that he is, he started doing sugar work on raspberries for the garnish...then he got too distracted doing that and forgot about the pastry in the oven. He ended up burning one of his batches, and his other ones puffed up a LOT. He had to cut a piece horizontally to make the layer, and sandwiched pastry cream inbetween. They were very flaky and tasty, but G was definitely not happy with his work this time.

My work. Vol-au-vent with Persimmon Cream, Cranberry Compote, and pomegranate sauce. For the persimmon cream, I just pureed persimmon and folded it into the vanilla pastry cream. But being such a mild-flavored fruit, the persimmon taste was just barely there. Otherwise, it turned out pretty good--the pastry puffed up, was flaky...puff pastry isn't as scary as it used to.

Then on to Week 7....

We had a group change, which is nice....don't get me wrong, I got along fine with my group. But working with G for six weeks straight (he's a nice guy, but tends to be somewhat of a control freak) gets tiresome.

My new group members are 'R' and 'B' (no pun intended...). R is apparently quite experienced in the kitchen, and has been in the restaurant industry for a while. B, on the other hand...a nice guy, but very quirky. He's in the same Baking & Pastry Program like me, which is quite unusual for a guy. Most of the males are in the Culinary Program and the females make up the majority of the Baking Program.

While he's passionate about baking and cooking, his products tend to turn into culinary fiascos. In Week 6, he was excitedly telling me about his dessert...

B: "I'm gonna churn vanilla ice cream, and towards the end, mix in some grated cheddar cheese and crumbled ultimate bacon, then serve that over warm, sugar-glazed croissants. Behold.... the Ultimate Bacon & Cheddar Ice Cream Croissants! It's like, dessert-breakfast--the marriage of dessert and breakfast, two of the best meals of the day!! Don't you agree!!???"

Me: "....................."

The result? His croissants were heavy, doughy and flat (due to overworking the dough), his ice cream didn't have enough time in the freezer (he should've churned the ice cream the day before to freeze overnight) so it completely melted. And the flavor? Bacon overpowered everything, and was perhaps the only part of the "dessert" that was remotely edible.

So this guy is in my group. Things definitely got interesting with him around...

Our new recipes to do were strudel dough and cheesecake. I volunteered to do the cheesecake (since it's my specialty), R wanted to do a Panna Cotta, and that left B to do the strudel dough. After each of us did the initial tasks for our own desserts, both R and I helped B with the strudel dough. Unlike danish or croissants, strudel dough needs to be stretched, not rolled. Each of us grabbed a corner and slowly stretched it, being careful not to tear the dough. The dough needed to be stretched until nearly transparent (you can "read through it"). We wanted to try something different from everyone else, so instead of filling it and wrapping it, we baked it flat, in sheets. Our plan was to layer the sheets and pastry cream to make a napoleon-like dessert.

With the cheesecake, I decided to do a trio of flavors: pumpkin, chocolate, and apple (since that was the only fruit available other than pomegranate...), each flavor with different crust. Pumpkin had the gingerbread, chocolate had chocolate, and apple had pecan crust.

And then I found out there's no cream cheese. I had to substitute mascarpone, which I've never used. The three different crusts were done by this time. I look at the clock--45 minutes until our 25 minute break. Our class is over an hour and a half after the break. The cheesecakes need at least an hour of baking time. If I didn't put the cakes in the oven before the break, I was screwed.

I quickly mixed the base for the cheesecakes, and had to ask...B for help.... After I dumped in the pumpkin spice into one of the bowls, I told him to mix in 1/3 cup of pumpkin puree into it. Then I told him to melt 3 oz. of chocolate. He grins and asks, "OK....8 oz???"

I told him, no, 3 oz. He grins back and asks, "Oh, so 6 oz?????". I tell him again, no, 3 oz. By this time, I was getting very, very annoyed. There was 15 minutes left til break.

He finally left to get chocolate. While he was measuring them out, he asks, "So...12 oz, right??????". At which point, I declared that if he doesn't measure out 3 oz. of chocolate right now, I'm going to flay him with a pineapple.

He finally relented and did as he was told...but goodness....

But I did get the cakes in the oven in the nick of time! An hour later, they came out OK. The next day, I made the garnishes--the brittle, chocolate work, and candied apple slices. I decided to use the sauce made by R, the caramel whiskey sauce. I figured caramel would be the only sauce that will go with these trios.

We got everything done on time!

R's work. Kahlua and Irish Cream Panna Cotta with caramel whiskey sauce...

B's work. Deconstructed strudel with pastry cream and fig filling...

And mine. Cheesecake Trios.

Due to Thanksgiving, we have Week 8 off. In two weeks, we have our final. Man, this quarter is going by fast...

Intro to Pastry Week 5--Blackbox Midterm

Winter is finally here. We had a bounty of apples from our tree this year, and I took the opportunity to cook and can them for--what else?--Apple pie!

Now that I can make some decent pie crusts (a dramatic improvement from horrifying garbage I used to make months ago...), I made several apple pies. One went to a potluck at church few weeks ago (and that I forgot to mention in the previous posts). Another lady also made an apple pie, but she was going around bragging to everyone that it's "the best pie" and "highly recommend it"...over other desserts that other people brought. HOW. RUDE.

But here's one of my apple pies....

I prefer the nut-streusel topping than the traditional two-crust or the lattice-top. The streusel provides a nutty crunch and textural contrast to the tender apples and the flaky crust. Another thing that I've started doing is rolling the pie dough via folding. It's a procedure similar to making laminated doughs (i.e. puff pastry, croissants, etc). This produces a very flaky crust with many layers, but it's tougher than the regular pie crust. But my family and friends said that the pie, especially the crust, is phenomenal and delicious. Maybe the Americans would prefer the more tender regular crust than this "laminated" version.

And speaking of apple pies--our friend Chef Toshi, the executive chef at Naked Fish, was one of the friends who ate my apple pie. He had fallen head over heels for it, and asked if I can make it as one of the desserts at the restaurant.

I sighed. Using some gross grocery store-bought apples that have been ethylene gassed will NEVER produce the same product no matter what. What made that apple pie delicious was the apples--organic, unsprayed, from our backyard. And using ingredients harvested from someone's backyard is frowned upon by the FDA. Yes, the pie is delicious. Yes, people would probably pay for it. But this is the limit of restaurant food--it can't duplicate the taste of homemade.

This is the Mocha Trifle, my own invention being served at the restaurant...Layers of chocolate syrup (made by me--we use Hershey's only during emergencies), chocolate and coffee custard, rum-soaked ladyfingers, and lightly sweetened whipped cream. For service, we dust it with cocoa powder and a tuile. So far, this has been our most popular dessert. I am stoked! :)

So on to our Blackbox Midterm!

Each group got an assortment of blackbox ingredients. Each student had to come up with unique plated dessert; we didn't have to use every ingredients given, but had to incorporate at least one of them--and we were not allowed to use the ingredients from other groups.

My group walked up to our table, which had: Blueberries, grapefruits, peanutbutter, cashews, almond extract, and white chocolate.I immediately thought, "Blueberry-White Chocolate Mousse", but dismissed the thought. Too common. Everyone will come up with that. So I turned my attention to the grapefruit. I started calculating....

Lemon + White Chocolate = tasty combo; Lemon = citrus; Grapefruit = citrus; therefore, Grapefruit + White Chocolate = potentially tasty combo

So just to double check, I ate a grapefruit segment with some white chocolate chips. Wow. Not bad at all! I finalized my dessert plan: Grapefruit-White Chocolate Mousse Profiterole with blueberry sauce, and cashew tuile.

We had two days to do this. On the first day, I baked the choux pastry shells and experimental Grapefruit-White Chocolate mousse (since I've never made this before). Second day, I checked on the mousse. Oh boy. Too stiff. I had to come up with a different method--and decided to make a grapefruit curd with white chocolate, then fold in whipped cream to make the mousse. I crossed my fingers and let it chill in the fridge. In the meantime, I made the blueberry sauce, and baked the tuiles.

It seemed like I didn't do much, but each task took me a while, mostly because I was unfamiliar with some of the recipes. Plating time approached fairly quickly, and all of us managed to plate ours on time.

One of my team member, J's midterm: Blueberry & White Chocolate Mousse with Cashew Cookie.

This one is done by G. I think it's Blueberry & White Chocolate Frozen Souffle in tuile cup, with grapefruit sorbet.

...and this one is mine. Grapefruit-White Chocolate Mousse Profiterole with blueberry sauce and grapefruit curd.

Chef said that most of our products are way too big, but did a pretty good job for a midterm. But she asked the important question: Is this worth ten hours of work? She had a point. We had ten hours to do this--and now that I think about it, I guess I could've done more.

I am now determined to do better for the final in a few weeks.

Intro to Pastry Week 3 & 4

Intro to Pastry Week 3 & 4 Recap

Finally, an update! With the part time work at Naked Fish Japanese Bistro and classes, I haven't been this busy since I quit my job at the plasma collection center.

But here are the pics from Week 3. Our project for this week involved frozen mousse, meringue, truffles, and classical (not frozen) mousse.
This is our Raspberry-Cappuccino Frozen Souffle:

It's called a 'souffle' (even though it's not baked) because it's molded in a ramekin, with the top above the rim. That's the only reason. One of the guys in my group, G, did this one, and he topped it with Italian meringue, which he torched for that Baked Alaska look.

And this is my French Meringue Swan! It was very airy, light and crispy. Filled with Classical Chocolate mousse, with Blueberry Cream sauce...which Chef thought looked a bit too unnatural. Next time, I'll just stick with the regular blueberry puree.

...And being the overachiever that I am, I made an additional dessert plate. White Chocolate Mug with Chocolate Mousse, Meringue, and Chocolate cake layers...with a Meringue spoon. I had the hardest time molding the chocolate! The molding chocolate was brushed on a sheet of acetate, and left to thicken up a bit (so chocolate won't dribble all over the place while molding), then rolled into a cylinder. Sounds easy enough, but when I started on this, it took me three tries until it finally came out with a decent-looking product. The chocolate needs to be at just the right consistency; not too runny, not too thick. First time around, the chocolate was too runny, and I ended up with a very thick-bottomed cup with a very thin wall--which promptly broke. Same thing happened on second try. Finally with the third try I came up with the above product. *phew* Learned something new today...

Coffee Truffles. Not exactly considered a plated dessert, but the other guy in my group, M, did his best.

Overall, everyone did very well, and Chef was quite happy. :)

Then on to Week 4. Our projects this week involved Angel Food Cake, Japonaise Meringue (meringue with ground nuts), Linzer tart, and several kinds of Creme Brulee--the contemporary, stovetop version and the traditional baked version.

This is our Apple Creme Caramel--basically another name for flan. It tasted great, but couldn't really taste the apple. Chef thought the plate looked a little bland...

Raspberry-Strawberry Angel Food Cake w/Japonaise meringue. Cake turned out a bit dry, but pretty good.

Black Sesame & Nut Tart with Orange Sauce--my own creation! Black sesame filling with Caramel-Nut topping, all encased in crispy almond crust...but it scared Chef. She said she was afraid to try it! Apparently, using black sesame in sweets/desserts were a strange concept to everyone. I mean, seriously...Asians have been doing it for centuries! As for the tart...the topping turned out a bit too chewy. I probably overcooked the caramel :P. But the flavor was awesome--very nutty, from the sesame and all the nuts in it. Truly, every nut-lover's dream!

And then our Creme Brulee. Holy Crap. The guy who did this, G, has got some talent! He made the tuile cups, the stovetop version Creme brulee (all flavored differently; mango, vanilla, and pomegranate), and decorative sugar work, to put together this beautiful plate!

Here's the closeup pic. The sugar work is like glass!

So that's it for the Intro to Pastry. Next week: Blackbox Midterm!!!

...and I'll post an update on the situation at the Naked Fish as soon as I get the chance.

Intro to Pastry Week 1 & 2

*phew* The last week and a half was VERY hectic. On the 5th, I received the phone call from the Japanese restaurant where Chef Toshi works at. It was the owner, and he wanted to talk to me regarding the restaurant's dessert menu. When I went, I took some sample pictures of what I've made in the past. He was quite impressed, especially with the profiteroles and the green tea cheesecake. He asked for samples right away--he wanted the profiteroles small, with three different cream filling, as a trio on a single plate and the cheesecakes whole. He asked for 2 whole Green Tea & White Chocolate Marble cheesecakes and 30 trios (translation: 90 profiterole shells). And he wanted them on the 11th.

With Pastry Class and everything, that turned into one crazy weekend, but I pulled it off!

But here are the products we made in the Week 1 of Intro to Pastry.

Almond Cream Tart with Blackberry Sauce. Chef liked the presentation, but wasn't too sure about the sugar-coated grapes. She says that every garnish must have a reason to be there--she HATES mint leaves for that reason, because everybody just throws it on there for no apparent purpose other than to make the dessert "look nice".

Freeform Apple Tart (a.k.a. Apple Galette). I made this one, and this other guy in my group made the ice cream and the caramel sauce. Chef gave us a very short notice to make this one--thank goodness I've made this at home on numerous occasions... But what I like about this particular recipe from the textbook is that the apple filling is flambeed. I've never flambeed anything before (not on purpose anyway)...and I've always wanted to--even dreamed of-- flambee something. There is something ridiculously appealing/exciting/hot about an ordinary saute pan sitting on the flame burner getting engulfed in roaring flames with a little "magic wave" of the chef's hand.

And this is our Frangipane Tart. Those are sliced Wine-Poached Pears, and we used a melon baller to scoop out those apples on top. The sauce is Creme Anglaise, but the Chef did not like how we kinda "squirted" the sauce all over. This class is more about presentation than taste, and the Chef really emphasized the importance of "line cleanliness"...basically no squiggly lines that even a two-year old can pull off.

This is the Frangipane Tart from the other group. Chef liked the addition of height, but said that keeping the skins on the apple is a no-no.
So that was Intro to Pastry Week 1...during which, I baked the entire day after class at home, for about three consecutive days. I then delivered them to the restaurant. Everyone there sampled the desserts...and loved them! Even the line cook, who seemed skeptical at first, said they taste awesome. But since they already have a lot of green tea-flavored items, she suggested that I make one of the profiteroles a different flavor. I immediately thought about using that black sesame cream filling! The owner liked the profiteroles so much he ordered an additional orders of 10 trios and a cheesecake...another busy week. I know I talk about it like it's a drag/bothersome job, but I actually LOVE doing this :)

Then on to Intro to Pastry Week 2! Now the way this class is set up can be confusing. There's a list of recipes of pastry elements that we need to make for that week (i.e. genoise, mousse, etc.), but no set-in-stone DESSERT recipe (i.e. cream puffs). But that's actually the way desserts work--a dessert is a complex structure composed of many different elements. Even a simple cream pie is constructed of two completely different elements: pie dough and cream. Our task is to come up with our own unique dessert using the various elements given to us.

For Week 2, our elements were Croissant dough, chiffon cake, genoise, jelly roll sponge, Ladyfingers, and Fruit Bavarian (*phew*).

We made the Croissant dough first. We'll be prepping the dough today and baking it next week.
There were two guys and myself in our group. One of the guys, G, wanted to make something with the chiffon cake and do the Bavarian Cream. The other guy, M, a quiet know-it-all, didn't know what he wanted to do...so I decided to do the genoise and the ladyfingers. So M just shrugged and started making the jelly roll and the croissant.

This was my first time making genoise and I was nervous. Considering my last few attempts at egg-foam cakes ending in disaster, I was extra careful not to screw up. But alas, I followed the recipe exactly and made it no problem!

The hole is from the cake testing...

Each of us worked hard on our own desserts. We had a demo by one of the chefs on how to roll out the croissant dough properly.

What's really challenging about this class is that every week is like a "blackbox"--we have to work with whatever ingredient available to make our dessert. For example, if we show up for class with plans to make a raspberry mousse, and raspberries are not available--we need to use something else. With that in mind, I decided to make a Chocolate Almond Torte with my chocolate genoise. I made chocolate whipped cream, almond syrup, and chocolate decoration. I sliced the genoise to make three layers, brushed them with the syrup, sprinkled chopped almonds, spread the cream, then repeated the layers. I poured chocolate glaze all over to finish it.

My Chocolate-Almond Torte. Quite decadent....

Poor M. And this was his second attempt too. His first attempt turned into a culinary fiasco; the cake had turned into a crisp, brittle sheet, more like a giant wafer cookie, and he had to start all over. Second time around, he overbaked the batter and the cake got dry and cracked. But he did his best--filled it with raspberry cream cheese fililng.

G did a good job with his Vanilla Chiffon cake. He also made a raspberry cream cheese filling, and drizzled it with raspberry sauce.

Other people's work. So pretty!

Done by other group, this one was Raspberry Bavarian with ladyfingers. Chef said the chocolate decoration is nice, but might be too high. The sauce also needs to be simpler.

Overall, I think we did very well. I am excited for next week!

How I spent my week-long break

So Rhee had to postpone the wedding due to scheduling conflicts and her poor baby's slew of health problems. She said she still wants me to make the desserts, but she's not sure when the wedding is going to be. Oh well. I'm still going to be busy with the upcoming church retreat... yessir, I volunteered to be the camp cook! About 48 people had signed up for it...I've NEVER cooked for this many people before, but I was stoked!

That was going to be over the weekend of October 1. Earlier in the week, I used this time to utilize the Asian pear given to us by our family friend. Behold, Asian pear galette...

...Unfortunately, the pear itself didn't taste very good, but paired with the buttery, flaky pie crust and sugar topping, it was delicious!

In the previous post, I made a peach pie with the yellow peaches we bought at the Farmer's Market. Well, the following week, we bought a box of white peaches. OMG. The white peaches were divine! I made some White Peach Cream Tart. A couple of our family friends went up the mountains to see the autumn leaves...

Oh, and see the black specks in the cream?? The aforementioned family friend gave me a a small package of real vanilla beans!! I was SO excited! This is also part of the reason why I made a cream tart, to see if there is a difference between creams made from extracts versus the beans....YES. There IS a difference. So much that I doubt I can go back to the extracts any more when making custard creams.

Our family friend, Tosh, is an Executive Chef at a local fine dining Japanese restaurant. During the picnic, he mentioned that the pastry chef at the restaurant is moving away, and was concerned about their future dessert menu; they can't keep serving just the Mochi Ice Cream, no matter how tasty they are. Then he asked me if I would be interested in making desserts for the restaurant! I was like, "Uh...WOW....SERIOUSLY??" This was close to a dream-come-true experience. He asked me to make a presentable dessert sample. So, later the same day, I quickly whipped up half a batch of choux pastry, and filled them with the vanilla bean cream.

Just for a sample, I made one of the cream puffs Green Tea flavor. Mom and I delivered them to him. I was confident that he'll like them...

A few days later, he said that he LOVES them and has asked the Restaurant Manager to contact me!

...But I had a bit of a reservation. PROCEED WITH CAUTION, the little voice in my head warned. After all, everything is in God's Hands. I should be careful to listen to Him before I go jumping into things too quickly....

....But just in case He DOES say "GO FOR IT!!", I started coming up with several different pastry cream flavors.

This one is pistachio. Who knows why, the cream gets very runny when I mix in the ground pistachio into the cream. Maybe I overmixed?

This one is black sesame cream. It was very nutty and quite good, but it tasted like Goma-tofu, a black sesame tofu served as a side dish in Japanese meals. Hmmm guess I'll play around with this one...

Then it was time for the retreat. The kitchen crew consisted of me and two other ladies from church. We were to make the Friday night dinner, all three meals on Saturday, and the breakfast on Sunday. Our food budget is $800--and I have no clue how, but one of the other ladies spent $400 at Costco. Only after spending that much money did she ask if she had left enough money for the rest of us. *sigh* I only ended up spending $100 for the meal I was responsible for, which was the Saturday night meal.

I packed all the food, clothes, toiletries, etc. in my car and headed off to the retreat (I'll leave out the gory details). For Friday night, the ladies made a vegetable noodle soup, chili, salad, cornbread, and banana pudding for dessert. We ended up with a lot of leftover soups, chili, and cornbread. For Saturday breakfast, we served cold cereal, muffins (from Costco--which, btw, are not really muffins but more like poundcakes. Real muffins won't have that domed shape to them unless overmixed), and assorted fruits. For lunch, we put out two kinds of cold cuts, three kinds of sliced cheese, six loaves of bread, and three kinds of chips (probably where the $400 went...). We also cut up some lettuce and tomatoes too. For dinner, (since I was in charge) I decided to make two kinds of lasagnas, one meat, one vegetable. I had a volunteer chop up some vegetables and one of the church ladies brown some meat. I ended up with way too much noodles and barely enough spaghetti sauce, but I managed to put together four 9" X 13" baking pans full. We got behind 20 minutes or so, but that time lag worked out great--definitely gave everyone plenty of time to work up some appetite. After baking the garlic bread and tossing together a salad, I put everything out and started serving everyone. The meat lasagna disappeared VERY quickly--somehow, all my vegetarians went missing. I think most people had seconds too; I cut 64 portions from the four pans and there was only 1 portion leftover.
The retreat itself went great! I got to share my story about how I survived stroke and how that event strengthened my relationship with God.

So that was about a week ago. Earlier this week, I tried my hand (AGAIN) at making Angel Food Cake...

...After being baked and cooled. So far, so good...

Hm. Not bad...no obvious caverns visible. Mostly fine crumbs....but the texture was kinda dry, and there was this funky, sour aftertaste--cream of tartar?? How can that be...? I checked the recipe. I can't remember, but I had a nagging feeling I accidentally added too much. Still have a long way to go...