European Cakes & Tortes Week 9

Week 9

Only two weeks before the quarter is over! Next week, on Week 10, we'll be making the components for our final tortes. We drew a lottery to determine which tortes each of us will be making. I got the White Chocolate Mousse w/Raspberry. That was one torte I haven't taken home to my parents, so I was OK with it...at the same time, I'm not a big fan of white chocolate. I was really hoping to get the Whiskey Hazelnut Mousse...

But here are the pics from Week 9. We ended up making two finished tortes and 1 plated dessert.

Raspberry Creme Brulee Macaron. The creme brulee here actually isn't baked, but set with gelatin. The addition of cake flour to the batter made the macaron more stable and cake-like. Even Mom, who doesn't like macarons a whole lot, liked this torte.

Empress Torte. Layers of raspberry mousseline, lime curd, and almond biscuit. Decorated with white chocolate planks. Finally, I figured out how to properly temper chocolates... for now...

For our desserts, we plated the Chocolate Mousse with Sweet Risotto. The risotto is basically a rice pudding flavored with citrus and vanilla. Quite tasty while warm, but once chilled....

...proved to be a formidable dessert layer. This is our group's plating, but we could not put a fork through this thing. We ended up wrestling with the cake, and turned it into a goopy chocolate mess.
Here are other group's plating.

Next week: the Final!!

European Cakes & Tortes Week 7 & 8

Finally, an update! With my stepniece in town and the two finals, things just got way too hectic. I can't understand how some people can pull off working full time AND going to school full time.

Anyway, here are the pics from Week 7 European Cakes & Tortes...

Vanilla Bean Bavarois. Plated as an individual serving in drinking glass. I cut a portion of the Bavarian cream off and poured in cocoa gelee for that layered effect. Chef thought the idea of serving it in a glass is very unique and interesting.

Diva Torte. I tried to toast the Italian meringue topping with the torch, but the flame kept going out... The pear mousse that we used (instead of apricot) wasn't as good as I'd hoped.

Week 8
This was a fun week. Tortes with lots of components opens a lot of options when plating as a finished dessert. This week, we plated the Nobilis Torte, which has layers of hazelnut cream, cherry gelee, and cherry-hazelnut meringue cake. Each group did their own plating. It was cool to see the different ways of plating the same torte.

Nice, clean, and simple.

This one got a little messy...

And here's ours. We deconstructed it and laid the layers flat. The caramelized sugar decoration added the necessary height.
And here is our composed torte. Lemon Mousse Cake w/Blackberries.

With caramelized sugar decor and dehydrated lemon slices. The purple striped joconde is very colorful and pretty, but made me dizzy/nauseous as I was handling it...

Cross-section. The blackberry insert got a bit too low. The lemon mousse was heavenly; Mom really loved this one and actually had seconds.

European Cakes & Tortes Week 6

European Cakes & Tortes Week 6

We made the components for the Diva Torte and Vanilla Bean Bavarois. Chef announced that she wants one of the tortes to be finished as a plated dessert--as in, individually portioned, with sauce, garnish, etc. She wanted us to plate the Vanilla Bean Bavarois. Bavarois (or Bavarian cream) is like a firmer version of mousse. While a volunteer made the Bavarois for everyone in the class, the rest of us got to work on the Diva Torte.

Diva Torte was my research project; we were supposed to find a historical background on it, but there was none. I mean, no on else could find a historical background on any of the tortes. So I presented a few interesting facts about the main ingredients of the torte: pistachio, apricot, and sesame.

Coincidentally, all three ingredients can be traced back to the Middle East. As a matter of fact, Turkey and Iran are the top major producers of pistachios and apricots. And sesame is used extensively in Middle Eastern cuisine. But why using these ingredients elevates this torte to the diva (meaning "goddess" in Latin) status, I have no idea.

Unfortunately, we didn't have any apricots, so we substituted pears instead. After we assembled the Diva Torte, we had to decide how to plate our Vanilla Bean Bavarois. My partner and I decided to serve ours in a drinking glass instead of on a plate. We ladled the cream into a glass, and put it away. We then finished the two tortes that we made last week...

Palomo Torte. For garnish, we glazed some strawberries and made pistachio glass. The glass ended up a little too thick and it was more like a brittle.

Rubies Torte. Finished with cocoa gelee, and garnished with glazed raspberries and chocolate decorations. The glaze emitted so much glare I had trouble taking a picture of this torte.

Cross-section of the Rubies Torte. There's the raspberry gelee and raspberry ganache layers. The only torte in the textbook without any mousse component, this cake is very rich and dense.

I served the Rubies Torte at my church. As for the Palomo torte...friends and family ate half of it, and I had to put the rest in the compost. We weren't too fond of this torte.

Artisan Bread Week 8

Artisan Breads Week 8: Day 1

We suddenly got an order for 9 baguettes from the school restaurant. Each group made the full recipe of the French Bread, which makes about 4 loaves.

I've been practicing at home, so shaping these was easy. They turned out great, and the restaurant staff were happy :)
We made sweet breads today, which was a nice change from all the savory breads that we've been making: Cinnamon Raisin Swirl and Cranberry Walnut Braid. We also made a biga for Ciabatta and the rye starter for the Pumpernickel Bread for Day 2.

Cinnamon Raisin Swirl. After the bread is baked, the loaves are brushed with butter and dusted with cinnamon-sugar. The whole kitchen smelled like cinnamon-y goodness.

Cross-section of the Cinnamon-Raisin. Nice swirly action going on here.

Cranberry Walnut Braid. Nice, mahogany color! We substituted dried cherries instead of the cranberries. I decided I'm not a big fan of dried cherries... nevertheless, it still tasted great.

Artisan Breads Week 8: Day 2

We used the biga and the rye starter prepared on Day 1 to make Ciabatta and Pumpernickel Bread. I made the Pumpernickel while my other teammates made the Ciabatta and the Challah.
Unbeknownst to a lot of people, Pumpernickel Bread's dark color comes from cocoa powder--not a super dark rye flour. The dough was super soft, and was quite difficult to handle. When I loaded the loaf into the oven after proofing, it got bumped in the back; one end of the loaf got squished in and it came out smaller than it was supposed to :( It still tasted delicious! I used it to make a roast beef sandwich with home-grown (and organic!) tomatoes and cukes and Dijon-mayo (with a dollop of tonkatsu sauce). Mom, who's not too fond of dark breads, pronounced it divine :)

Ciabatta breads and Pumpernickel. My friend also had some trouble with the Ciabatta. The dough was so soft that it stuck to the flour-dusted cloth that she was proofing it on. The loaves tore a bit, and got deflated. I don't think I've ever heard anyone spew out 20 expletives in 30 seconds.

But, despite the mishaps, her Ciabatta still turned out very nicely. Tender and soft on the inside, crusty on the outside. I made another sandwich with this one, with ham, cheese, tomatoes and cukes.

Challah is a traditional Jewish bread, eaten on the Sabbath. Enriched with eggs and butter, it is quite delicious, like a milder version of brioche.

We shaped ours into a turban braid. I made French toast using this bread for breakfast.

So that's it for Week 8. I've been baking breads at home too, so I'll post them as soon as I have the time...

Artisan Bread Weeks 7

Artisan Breads Week 7

Week 7 Day 1 projects: Light whole wheat bread, Portuguese Sweet Bread, and Pita pocket bread; the poolisch and Old Dough for Day 2 breads

Since these breads are from Bread Baker's Apprentice instead of the school textbook, Chef typed the recipes and emailed it to us. We came in with the printed copy and started making the breads. I started on the pita bread while my other teammates worked on the Portuguese Sweet bread and the Light Whole Wheat. I mixed up the ingredients, but noticed something odd about the recipe--it called for 0.5 oz of instant yeast (roughly 5 teaspoons) but only 6.75 oz (little less than 2 cups) of bread flour and 4 fl.oz. of water.

Whoa...that's a lot of yeast! I thought. But that's what the recipe said, so I kept going. But halfway through the kneading, I noticed that the dough had an awfully yeasty smell. Worried, I had others smell it. They both agreed that the dough smelled way too yeasty, and that 0.5 oz. of yeast is too much for the amount of flour and water it contained. Then something clicked in my head---

"What if it was a typo?"

Now very worried, we double checked with the Bread Baker's Apprentice book that Chef had on her table....

It was a typo. A major typo.

The amount of yeast is supposed to be 0.055 oz. Definitley not 0.5. I immediately informed everyone in the class (some of who had already kneaded the dough and was fermenting it) and then informed Chef. She was quite shocked at her mistake and apologized repeatedly. I threw out the dough and started over. Fortunately it was a very easy recipe with six ingredients, so it didn't take us too long to get the dough (with the correct amount of yeast) together.

Clockwise from top: Light Whole Wheat, Portuguese Sweet breads, and Pita bread. We tried different toppings on our Portuguese Sweet Breads. I put a mixture of coconut and almonds on mine, and others put sanding sugars. They were sweet and delicious. Another incident happened with the Whole Wheat Bread also--again, there was a typo on the amount of butter in the recipe. Instead of "1 oz." Chef had typed "10z." which confused everybody into thinking that this bread contained 10 oz. of butter. Ours were the only ones that turned out great--since we were the only ones who double checked with the actual book. Other group's had turned into a greasy, oily bread; they had the flavor of whole wheat brioche, with a muffin-like texture and crumb.

We cut open our pita to see if it had formed a pocket....

ROOOOOOARRRRRRRR!!! ...yep, it did.

Week 7 Day 2

So, with the mishaps from Day 1, Chef decided to write out the recipes on board for us to copy into our notebook. This is fine, since there's less chance of a typo, but it takes up the first 40~60 minutes of our class time, which leaves us only 4 hours to make several different kinds of breads.

Today's projects: Pane Siciliano, Pain de Campagne, Poolisch baguette, and Multigrain Extraordinaire. We used the Old dough and the poolisch that we had prepared yesterday on Day 1.

Pane Siciliano is an Italian bread that is traditionally shaped into an S-shape loaf and sprinkled with seeds. We tried poppy and sesame seeds.

The bottom ones are the Multigrain Extraordinaire, with different toppings. A tasty and healthy bread with lots of whole grains incorporated into it.

Pain de Campagne is a type of rustic French bread. There are many recipe variations out there, but this one uses Old dough. The Old dough lends a deeper, complex flavor and a somewhat more dense texture. It can be formed into many different shapes, such as tordu, tabatier, epi, etc. I shaped mine into a simplified couronne Bordelaise, a crown-shaped loaf of bread.

Turned out very pretty! Although it looks more like a Japanese cherry blossom than a crown... The bread itself tasted quite delicious, its flavor hard to describe. It was like French bread, but it had that underlying sweet flavor that developed while chewing.

We only have two more weeks left...