Display Cakes Weeks 1 & 2

New quarter started! I'm taking Display Cakes and a Capstone course. The Capstone is a course designed to guide the students through the process of starting a restaurant/food establishment from the very beginning til the end. This starts out with coming up with our own concept, menu, business plan, etc. It is quite daunting and overwhelming....but since most of the action goes on in my Display Cakes class, I'll be posting mainly on that class.

Week 1 was all about production. We baked the cakes and made the simple and Swiss buttercream that we'll be using for the rest of the quarter. Of course, we'll have to do some production along the way to replenish our supplies.

Sheet cake batter, ready to go in the oven.

The Swiss buttercream involves whipping the egg whites over a hot water bath to 140F to dissolve the sugar. I had to use a whisk the length of my arm to whip the 4 lbs. of egg whites in the bowl....

Egg whites whipping in the commercial size mixer. Once they cool down, we start adding butter and shortening and whip it to a buttery, smooth deliciousness.

Softened butter and shortening, ready to go into the mixer. Hope that's enough butter!

We started decorating cakes on Week 2. We learned various piping techniques: basketweave, shells, pearls, and rosettes. But there was some prep work to do.

We applied a 'crumb coat' on our cakes. It's a very thin layer of simple buttercream, but this keeps the cake moist and seals in any loose crumbs that can make the cake look 'dirty'.

Once the crumb coat is done, the cake is frosted with a generous amount of Swiss buttercream. Swiss buttercream is used for the final layer since it tastes way better than simple buttercream. We smoothed the surface of the cake and put them in the fridge to allow the cream to set. We can then start decorating the cake. Let the fun begin....

A weeklong break...

Done with the finals! We get a weeklong break before next quarter starts. What to do with all this time? Bake, of course!

By this time, my parents have gotten sick of the crusty/chewy, flavorful variety breads that I've been bringing home. When asked what kind of bread she would like, Mom responded, "Plain white bread."... Awww, you're no fun....

But hey, I should be able to bake any kind of bread, plain or interesting. So I decided to try the white pan bread recipe from the Advanced Baking & Pastry book.

Turned out really nice, with great soft texture. I baked one in a regular loaf pan and the other one in Pullman loaf pan (which has a lid on it).
Next, there was this Sourdough Tahini Loaf recipe that I've made before and wanted to tweak a bit. What if I substituted Nutella for the tahini? That'll make one tasty bread...

I also added chocolate chips to it. The result? ...eh. There wasn't enough Nutella flavor to it. For the amount of Nutella used, (1/4 C) I don't think it's worth making. Might as well add Frangelico or hazelnut extract to pane de cioccolate (the chocolate bread)...which I need to do very soon.

I then wanted to retry the Sourdough Multigrain bread. I have made this bread before, back in May, and it turned our very nice. I wanted to find out what went wrong during my Artisan Breads final. I tried a different Sourdough Multigrain recipe--this one is from the Advanced Baking & Pastry...

Turned out nice, with great crumb and great flavor. This recipe instructed to add the grain/nuts mixture after the dough has been kneaded to full development. The one used in my final didn't. Someday, I'll get to the bottom of this...

European Cakes & Tortes Final!!

Sorry, no pics from Week 10. That week consisted of making the components for our final torte. I got the White Chocolate Mousse w/Raspberry, which had the Emmanuel Sponge base, red-striped joconde border, white chocolate mousse filling, raspberry gelee insert, finished with raspberry glaze (*phew*).

My joconde got awfully crumbly and fell apart while assembling it--that was frustrating. All I could do was pack them in tightly and pray that the cracks won't show. I think I panned out the batter a little too thinly. I poured the mousse in, placed the raspberry insert, filled the rest of the torte, and put it in the freezer...

The following week (the final week), I made the glaze, and poured it over the frozen torte. I put it in the fridge and got to work on making the white chocolate decorations. And had the toughest time tempering it. I'm still getting used to tempering chocolates to proper temperature. My first three attempts resulted in chocolate that didn't set at all. I still had plenty of time, but it was stressing me out!

Finally, I got the white chocolate properly tempered, and made the lattice decoration. I propped it up glazed raspberries and a neatly cut block of raspberry gelee.

Thankfully, the cracks on the joconde were barely noticeable. I thought the torte looked gorgeous! But Chef thought that the block of gelee, while appropriate, would "confuse" customers, and took off a point just for that :( My insert was 1/8" lower than the middle and she took off 2 points. Boy, she grades harshly... I got a 97/100, which is good...well, being the perfectionist that I am, I was hoping for a 100/100.

I took the torte home to my family and also my stepniece. It was delicious, and everyone loved it, except Mom thought it was too rich; I could only have a small slice myself. (I get sick otherwise)

But that was my European Cakes final. It was a fun quarter! We now get a weeklong break, and then the new quarter starts. Until then...

Artisan Breads Week 11...the FINAL final

Week 11 the FINAL final

Oh. My. Goodness. It was a disaster.

My final bread was the Multigrain Sourdough Bread from our textbook. I was confident, since I've made this bread before on a few occasions and they turned out very nicely. I followed the directions, put the dough in the mixer and left it there. Came back in about 5 minutes...and the dough was a sticky mess. I kept adding water and flour to it, but the dough just wouldn't come together. Finally I hand-kneaded for a few minutes, which seemed to help, and started the fermentation. To make matters worse, this particular bread requires double fermentation--in other words, it needs to be fermented twice, about an hour or so each.

So not only did this @#$% bread take me forever to make, it also turned out horribly (at least in my opinion). One of the loaf was flat on the top--I mean, like, Pullman loaf flat. It looked like it rose halfway and then collapsed. Did I overproof them?? It was really dense and a bit crumbly, but actually tasted quite delicious. Surprisingly Chef gave me a perfect score, based on color (which was good), texture, and flavor.

I unfortunately had to toss these into compost...the texture was horrible, almost like a really dense quick bread.

The following week, I made the same bread--the same thing happened. I'm gonna keep trying until I figure out what was wrong...

But at least I passed my final with a perfect score!

Artisan Breads Week 10 and the first part of our final

Week 10 and the first part of our final

On Day 2 of Week 10, each of us baked our own final bread and a Cranberry Walnut bread for our group project.

Here's my friend's final, the ciabatta bread.

Another friend's final, the Plie Breton.

Aaaand here's mine, Potato, Cheddar, and Chive Torpedo (from Bread Baker's Apprentice).

It has swirls of Cheddar cheese in it; the mashed potatoes in the dough make this bread very moist and tender.

Artisan Breads Week 9 & the first part of our final

Artisan Breads Weeks 9 & 10

For Week 9 of Artisan Breads, we baked the Potato Rosemary bread and Stollen from Bread Baker's Apprentice. The Cuban-Style loaf (the ones with a slash down the middle) recipe is from our textbook.

Nothing too interesting. There was only Day 2 this week because of Labor Day break.

Week 10

For this week, we baked the Stollen (this one is from our textbook) and the Lavash Crackers on Day 1.

Loaves of Stollen brushed with butter, dusted with powdered sugar. There's a stick of marzipan in the middle for a nice sweet bite. We made four, so we gave one to our instructor. She ate it for breakfast the next morning.

Lavash crackers. While others sprinkled spices and herbs on theirs, we smeared ours with melted chocolate, chopped nuts, and a very light sprinkle of sea salt. They were delicious!

Other than these breads, we made preparations (i.e. old dough, sponge, soaker, etc.) for our final on Day 2.