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...