Krista’s adventure through culinary school

Today we worked on three cakes:

Lemon Semolina Cake-lemon semolina cake soaked with lemon simple syrup and glazed with lemon fondant.

Basque Cake-pound cake with a layer of rum flavored pastry cream…YUM!

Poppyseed upside down fruit cake-We used pears and plums with this poppyseed cake batter.

The lemon semolina and basque were delicious. They were both moist and had great flavors. The upside down fruit cake was okay. I didnt think it had much flavor and actually turned out kind of dry. The fruit gave it a nice presentation, but ultimately, I dont think I will make this cake again. Below are pictures of our products.

I didnt post anything from Friday, but we made lemon tarts and puff pastry strips with fresh fruit. The lemon tarts were very good. We used 16 fl oz of fresh squeezed lemon juice….needless to say, they would make you pucker. The fruit strips were tasty, but knowing the amount of butter in the puff pastry, made each bite not worth its consequence(inches to the waist).

Til next time….

Today we completed the finishing touches on the Frangipane tart and Swedish Hazelnut tart that we made yesterday. Below are pictures of our final product. I didn’t get to try the Swedish Hazelnut, but I hope to try it tomorrow. It has, among other things, ground hazelnuts and candied orange peel…yum.

Frangipan Tart

Swedish Hazelnut Tart

For production today, we made a Tarte Tartin and an Almond Pear tart with frangipane filling and wine soaked pears. The Tarte Tartin was delicious. We carmelized sugar in a saute pan and add apples for about 40 min over low heat. We then put a piece of puff pastry over the carmelized apples and baked it. Though it doesn’t look the prettiest, the apples get so juicy from soaking up the carmel, it tastes amazing.

Tarte Tartin

Today we had the practical for the filled cakes rotation.

The task:

Make one 8 inch black forest cake, one 3 inch Raspberry Buttercream cake, and vanilla sauce in three hours.

The first two practicals that I took lasted 5.5 hours each, so the three hour time limit seemed challenging at first. The products are pretty simple and as stated before, are focused more on detailed work, than volume production. I did pretty well on all products and was happy with my work. Below are some pictures of my two cakes.

I’m back… After a few wonderful weeks at home in Minnesota with my hubby and Duke, I am back to get into the nitty gritty of the program. It seems as if we are starting the more challenging products, which I am excited to learn about.

I was quite busy with work and school the last few weeks before our summer break, so I wasn’t able to post much, but I am going to try and get back in the swing of things this class. We just finished our first week of Basic and Classical Cakes. The class is divided in two sections, filled and unfilled cakes. I had the pleasure of being on the filled cakes rotation first. I have been looking forward to the class since we started. I am enjoying it, but am looking forward to learning more about the science behind all the wonderful creations we are making. Our lectures have centered around production this past week, but will shift to the science this week.

Overall, it has been a good time back at school. We are shifting from volume production, to more detailed work…which I am enjoying. Below are pictures of what I have been working on this week. Enjoy.

Raspberry Yogurt Cake: Basically a raspberry mousse cake.

St. Honore Cake:

This cake is a bit more complicated as it has many components which include a puff pastry bottom, pate au choux ring filled with chiboust cream, filled cream puffs with carmel tops and finally finished off with chantilly cream piped using a St. Honore tip and chocolate shavings. Wow…that was a mouthful. St. Honore is the patron saint of bakers and pastry cooks.

Charlotte Cakes: We made three flavors of this delicious, refreshing cake. A charlotte cake typically combines sponge cake and bavarian cream with a wide range of flavoring options. We made three flavors…Shown in order: Raspberry/Vanilla, Carmel/Pear, Orange

For our grand finale, we made the following cakes on day 6 of the filled cakes rotation.

Chocolate Cognac Cake:

This cake can be as strong or light in cognac flavor as you want it. It starts with a layer of chocolate cake soaked with cognac simple syrup, then a layer of cream filling, chocolate filling and topped with a crunchy chocolate triangle.

Chocolate Shingle Torte:

This cake would be perfect for Thanksgiving! Its “shingles” can be assembled to make it resemble a turkey. It consists of layers of dense, moist chocolate cake and creamy gianduja mousse which is glazed with bittersweet chocolate and decorated with chocolate shingles.

Chocolate Grand Marnier Cake:

By far, this was my favorite cake of this weeks production. As my chef stated, it is like eating a large truffle. It consists of layers of grand marnier flavored ganache, hazelnut japonaise(basically a baked meringue) and chocolate sponge cake. The ganache was amazing with a hint of grand marnier flavor in its rich, creamy and almost carmel-like texture.

This cake was also the most labor intensive…yes we layered and cut each triangle by hand! But the end result made it worthwhile.

That is all for now. More to come next week of unfilled cakes and tarts. Now off to finish piping homework …………….