Days 21 and 22: Chestnut Mousse

Remember the Mont Blanc from Angelina?  Well, this Chestnut Mousse Cake was our version of that popular chestnut dessert.  It was a dacquoise cake base filled with a chestnut mousse and topped with a chestnut cream.  It was very delicious and I took mine to a birthday party after baking it to be enjoyed by all.  The finishing touch to the cake was that it was covered with a chocolate spray.  Directing the chocolate spray was quite a task when you think about the fact that everyone in the kitchen is wearing their bright, white uniforms!

My Dome Aux Marrons
or Chestnut Mousse Cake

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 20: Pistachio Dacquoise

An interesting cake from a few weeks ago was the pistachio dacquoise.  It was very hard to make and nothing special to the taste.  It was a dacquoise base made from ground almonds, powdered sugar, pistachio paste and meringue.  It was layered with pistachio cream, berries, and a crisping layer that was heated to, again, resemble creme brulee.  It was certainly not my favorite, but it turned out alright.

My Pistachio Daquoise

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Angelina and Chanel

Each term the students in the intermediate pastry classes attend a field trip to a famous tea room in the first arrondissement of Paris called Angelina.  Angelina opened it's doors in 1903 and has been a haven for French society, celebrities, and sweets lovers alike ever since.  It is not only beautiful, but they have many, many desserts to choose from.  We were treated to a little taste of everything while we were there.

The most famous dessert is something called a Mont Blanc.  It is a perfect combination of meringue, freshly whipped cream, and sweet chestnut cream paste.  It is nothing like a traditional American dessert and I cannot really explain the taste, but it is definitely something unique to Paris that everyone should try at least once.  We also had what is known as the best hot chocolate in Paris.  It is extremely thick, rich, and creamy all at once.  It is a very intense flavor experience.  Finally we rounded out our plates with a chocolate raspberry macaroon made specially for Eva Longoria on one of her frequent trips to Angelina.

After the tasting and behind the scenes tour of the kitchen at Angelina we walked outside and I had my first celebrity sighting!  Standing next to his car with no less than four policemen was Karl Lagerfeld.  For those of you not in the know, Karl Lagerfeld designs for Chanel which has it's headquarters just around the corner from the Tearoom.  He is easily recognizable as he is always seen with his white hair tied back in a ponytail and he always wears dark black sunglasses and studded black gloves with finger holes.  A very exciting end to a very exciting day!

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Day 19: Apps

A few weeks ago we were introduced to Inverted Puff Pastry.  This puff pastry is similar to the regular puff pastry we've made in the past, but it is a little less temperamental.  It can be made with regular butter instead of dry butter and it can sometimes turn out better than regular puff pastry when made in a very hot climate.  The idea is that you create a regular dough and a butter dough and you wrap the regular dough inside of the regular dough.  You still fold and turn and roll out the dough a million times, but when you're done you have many layers of fluffy, puffy pastry.  We used this puff pastry dough to make savory petits-fours.  In other words we made appetizers!  

We made five different kinds of appetizers.  We made chorizo stuffed puff pastry, cocktail sausages in puff pastry, cheese straws, pate filled pastries, and something called devils on horseback which were tasty, but didn't use any pastry at all.  The devils on horseback were prunes wrapped in bacon and stuck with a toothpick and then baked.  The cheese straws were interesting because instead of rolling out the pastry using flour to avoid the dough from sticking to the work surface we used shredded cheese.  The cheese assured that the dough did not stick and got incorporated into the mix making a very cheesy dough after it was baked.

My Pigs in a Blanket.  A few with poppy seeds.

My veal pate filled puffs

My Devils on Horseback prunes in bacon

My golden cheese straws

Chorizo pastry puffs

My assortment of savory pastries!

Each of us had so many petits-fours when we were finished that we brought our bins of snacks to the local bar to give all of our hard work away.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Days 17 and 18: Plaisir

My sister Jex recently mentioned that she feels like I haven't been baking as many items this term as last term, but the truth is while we'd generally bake more than one item each class in Basic Pastry we only create one cake each class in Intermediate Pastry because there are so many different elements going into one small cake.

One of the more complicated cakes we've made is called a Plaisir.  Literally translated plaisir means pleasure.  While this cake is a pleasure to eat with a very smooth and velvety texture it is a pain in the neck to make.

The first step is to bake a joconde sponge biscuit which is a more dense cake then some of the others we've made.  While the cake part is cooking in the oven you have to make a vanilla supreme mousse and a chocolate mousse.

The first layer of cake is covered with the vanilla mousse and then put in the freezer to set.  After the vanilla mousse has set the chocolate mousse is poured on top of that and the cake is put back in the freezer to set again.  Once the chocolate mousse has set the cake is layered with another square piece of the joconde sponge biscuit.  Finally the top layer is painted with a heated egg and sugar glaze which is fired with a torch until it resembles the top of a Creme Brulee.

My Plaisir

The layers of my Plaisir

Very time consuming and a lot of very temperamental mousses and glazes involved, but the side view is kind of cool.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Days 15 and 16: Heavenly Chocolate

One of my favorite cakes so far was the Douceur Chocolat or Heavenly Chocolate cake.  It had a lot of different elements and turned out to be absolutely delicious!  This also happened to be the cake that I used as a birthday cake for my friend Andrew.

The first layer of the cake was a Hazelnut Dacquoise which is a spongey cake made of meringue, ground nut powder, and powdered sugar.  The second layer was a crispy hazelnut, praline, feuilletine mixture that was kind of like a gooey milk chocolate crunch bar layer.  On top of the crunchy layer was a layer of swirly chocolate mousse, followed by a disk of solid chocolate layered with more swirled mousse and another disk of chocolate.  Yum!

The layers of my Douceur Chocolat

The smooth top layer of my chocolate disk.

After the cake was assembled we decorated the top.  I used a simple swirl of chocolate mousse and triangles of milk chocolate that I'd cut out of my extra chocolate to decorate mine.  The cake sounds like it would have been ultra rich, but it was actually just perfect.  If I end up making my own birthday cake next year this will be on top of my list!

My decorated Douceur Chocolat

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!

Chocolate Sculptures

From time to time one of our Chefs will create a chocolate sculpture and display it in the front window of the school for all to see and admire.  While the sculptures are always incredibly detailed and impressive I often feel like the Chefs may have cheated a little by using wood, marble, or glue to support the sculpture or even just keep it together.  I'm also always awed by the flowers they create, but wonder why they then make leaves out of plastic or other materials.  On Thursday I had all of my questions answered.

A dark chocolate box sculpture full
of truffles by Chef Tranchant

Chef Christian Faure has been visiting us from Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa for the past few weeks and last week he offered an optional demo on chocolate sculptures.  I attended and was completely blown away by what I learned.  When we arrived he already had a huge sculpture on display and told us he was going to show us how it was made.  The sculpture was sitting on a piece of marbled granite, supported by a large, vertical wooden circle and held up further by a piece of carved wood painted with chocolate.  On top of the sculpture was a huge flower sitting on a red and orange plastic leaf and topped with a chocolate sphere to symbolize the sun.  At least that is what I thought I saw when I initially looked at the sculpture.

Boy was I wrong!  The ENTIRE sculpture was made of chocolate and Chef Faure showed us piece by piece how he made it.  Keep in mind when you look at my photos, I was up close and personal with this sculpture and still had trouble believing it was all chocolate.

Chef Faure showed us that the leaves are tempered dark chocolate layered with tempered white chocolate layered with more tempered white chocolate that has been mixed with food coloring.  The "wooden" circle and the swirly piece of "wood" supporting the sculpture from the bottom are solid pieces of chocolate that are set and then brushed with a metal brush that you'd use to clean an outdoor grill to give the chocolate a weathered looking texture.  Finally the most impressive part of the sculpture was the base.  What appeared to be a nice cut square of marble or granite that could have come directly from my kitchen counter was actually chocolate as well!  The marble texture was created by chopping up milk, dark, and white chunks of chocolate, placing them in a mold and combining them with melted hot cocoa butter.  Very, very impressive!

Here are a few of the photos of the very exciting demonstration.

A piece of "Granite" made of chocolate

Chef Faure layering the chocolate for the leaves.

Chef Faure applying a fine spray of a water and
red food coloring mixture to his chocolate flower.

A side view of Chef Faure's sculpture.

The delicate chocolate flower and leaves.

The flower with such real looking petals.

The leaf with knife etchings to give it texture.

The "marble" base of the sculpture.

A swirl of chocolate covered in gold dust.

Chef Faure's finished sculpture made completely of
chocolate with 2 raw cocoa bean pods sitting next to it.

Chef Faure and me with my signed edition of France's Best Recipes Cookbook.

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!