As expected, school has been very busy lately. My last day of classes is quickly approaching and blogging has had to take a back seat. My lab days have also been extremely crazy and challenging. For the past three weeks we've solely focused on working with chocolate, working with sugar and wedding cakes.
The first week we learned how to properly temper chocolate using a slab of marble. This makes the entire process a lot faster as the chocolate cools quickly. As usual, we would bring the chocolate up to 50-55 deegrees Celsius in a bain marie. Then you need to cool the chocolate to 27 degrees Celsius to start the crystalization process. We did this by pouring it onto the marble, then using flat spatulas to move the chocolate around on the cool surface. Once it was at the proper temperature, we could then warm it back up to 31-32 degrees Celsius to make it easier to work with. After learning how to temper properly, we could make several different decorations or desserts. We poured chocolate into little truffle molds that were different shapes, we made leaves made of chocolate and we even made a decorative basket out of chocolate! For the basket, we learned that by slowly adding a little water to the chocolate, it will cause it to seize and make the chocolate thicker and thicker. This made it possible for us to pipe the chocolate over a bowl forming the base of the basket. This thick chocolate concoction also dries very quickly and hard and can be used as a glue. The very last day of our chocolate week, we were made to temper the chocolate without a thermometer and only by touch! It was EXTREMELY difficult. I obviously don't have enough experience temper this way, but I tried my best and sort of succeeded. I managed to melt the chocolate and get it hot enough, then I cooled it until I thought it seemed thicker, then I attempted to bring the temperature back up slightly. Unfortunately when my teacher came around to grade me by measuring the temperature, the cohcolate was at 33.6 degrees Celsius. Considering the fact that I've only technically been doing this for a week, I thought I did fairly well... that's not what my teacher thought however... Overall, I feel as though the chocolate week was a success. This week we will be starting our chocolate showpiece where we each have to make a sculpture made out of chocolate by ourselves!!! I hope that the practice I've had will make making this showpiece less challenging... We shall see.

The next week we focused on sugar. This was very painful and difficult. Our teacher told us that this is a very important skill for us to learn as there are only a handful of people in Ontario that can work with sugar well. So having this knowledge will hopefully help when looking for employment. We first started with casting sugar. This involves bringing a large amount of isomalt (a form of sugar) with a small amount of water to a boil until it comes up to 165 degrees Celsius; needless to say that this is where the painful part began. Once the bubbles in the sugar stop rising to the surface, you can colour it and pour it into any shaped mold. We also sprinkled a little metallic dust over the sugar and blew it a little making it have a cool effect. Once cooled, the mold can be removed and and the sugar is hard and solid. We then started pulling sugar; this is where the real pain began! You would start the process the sane way as before, but would pour the boiling sugar on a silpat (stick free mat) allowing it to cool until it was a little harder, but malleable. Working under a heat lamp (that can actually give off a lot of heat!), we would take the sugar which was approximately 65-75 degrees Celsius and pull and twist it several times until it became shiny. We would do this with our hands!!! The only thing we had between our flesh and the close-to-boiling-hot-sugar was plastic gloves... these didn't really protect us from the heat. By pulling the sugar, we were able to to make ribbons of sugar by placing two different colours next to each other and pulling them together making stripes. We could then form the pulled sugar by cooling it a little and forming it into the desired shape. You can stick pieces together by heating one side with a heat lamp making it melt a little. This is how we made a ribbon/bow. The last technique we learned was how to blow sugar. This was the most difficult part. As with pulling, we would heat the sugar until it was malleable. A small piece of this would be shaped into a ball, then formed around your thumb (making a bowl-like shape). We had a pump that had a small tip at the end, and we would stick the bowl shpae to it. While keeping the sugar at a perfect temperature; not too hot and not too cold, we would slowly pump air into the sugar while forming it into whatever shaped we want (I formed it into an apple because it's just a circle!). The trick to doing this (apparently- I haven't quite mastered it yet) is to have the perfect balance between heat and cold. I didn't really succeed in this. Hopefully I will magically be able to do this for the sugar showpiece we make next week.

Finally, last week we focused on wedding cakes. Seeing as we've already worked with fondant and flower making, it wasn't too difficult. We used styrofoam boards instead of cake. In some ways, this made making the wedding cake more difficult as styrofoam is very light and can't stay still when pressure is applied- something necessary when icing the cake. We covered the tiers with fondant, made fondant roses and learned different piping techniques. It wasn't anything too difficult or new. We were also required to use pillars to hold up the top tier. This isn't really to my taste, but oh well! I thought I did fairly well on my wedding cake and was pleased with the outcome. The most difficult part of the entire week didn't even involve making the wedding cake- it involved destroying it! Since we needed to re-use the styrofoam boards (they're actually quite expensive), the minute after our cake was graded, we needed to take it all apart and wash off the styrofoam. It was very sad seeing all that work end up in the garbage bin. I will be making another wedding cake in two weeks and will be able to decorate it however I want, so I'm looking forward to that!

 

     So I've been on a bit of a blogging break. The past few weeks have been very busy and I just haven't had the chance to catch everyone up on everything. So I'll make this a little simpler and will just post pictures with the name of what it is.

 This is a white chocolate mousse cake with a raspberry gelee and pistachio dacqoise. We made roses for the tops and little squigly leaves as decorations.

 This is when we started to focuse more on plating rather than the product itself. This is a frozen caramelized pineapple bombe with a coconut dacquoise that has been completely covered in white chocolate. To decorate, I made a chocolate butterfly and design in chocolate with sauces.

 This was my exam day. We had to plate two identical desserts at 10:30 and then another two identical desserts at 11:30. The purpose of this was to be able to reproduce the same plate several times, time management, and creativity of decorations.
This was my first plate. I covered my dessert in a ganache, made a chocolate truffle with gold dust, made candied orange peels and several sauces.

 This was my second plate. I made a chocolate butterfly, a couple of fondant roses, and sauces. Both did fairly well!

 This is what I made during my reading week at home. It was for my very cute neigbour Chase's second birthday. He had a Thomas the Train themed birthday party! This was my first highly decorated tiered cake. I'm quite proud of it!

These are also some sugar cookies that I made for my mum's second grade class for Valentine's Day.

       I must say, I'm pretty proud of what I made on Tuesday. We made a regular high ratio vanilla cake and a plaine 'ole buttercream. What was different about this cake was that it was the first time we used fondant to cover the cake and make decorations. We did the usual thing to begin the decorating; trimming, filling and masking the cake. We only masked the cake with a little frosting because if there's too much, the fondant will ripple because of the moisture. The cake chilled in the freezer while we prepared the fondant. We rolled the fondant (which is a sugar that has been cooked to a specific point and cooled, this becomes a dough-like substance) fairly thinly and large enough to fit over the entire cake. You only have one good shot at covering the whole cake and it's not good if the fondant cracks, so I had to be very careful. Luckily I was able to cover the cake completely and smooth it all out. The the most difficult part of this is covering the sides and ensuring there aren't any ripples. Once the entire cake is covered, you just need to trim the excess off the bottom rim. Then we made fondant roses. First of all, you make a cone shaped with the fondant and let that dry a little (it dries fast, too fast!), then you roll little balls of fondant and place them between two pieces of plastic. To make the petals, you take the heel of your hand and smoosh the balls of fondant leaving one side thicker than the other. The petals need to be very thin on the one side, that way they look delicate. However this is also very hard to do seeing as they begin to sag and droop. You then take the petals and overlap them all around the cone shape. This is something that I need to practice some more... I tend to make the petals a little too thick. We also took some fondant and did some drooping along the sides of the cake. Where the two drapes met on the top of the cake, we made little bows with the fondant to cover it up. I was happy with how mine turned out!!!! I was actually very happy!

It also tasted really good.

     Friday we continued decorating the cakes we had baked on Tuesday. For the devil's food cake, we made a passion fruit and white chocolate ganache and prepared it in a similar way as the day before with the cake ring and acetate. We layered the bottom with a layer of cake, poured 3/4 of the ganache on top, then layered it once again with more cake and the remaining ganache. This set in the freezer while we continued with the last cake. For the chocolate butter sponge cake, we trimed both cakes in half, making four layers. We made a chocolate french buttercream. This is a lot like the other buttercreams we've made, but instead of whipping egg whites and adding the boiling sugar water, we whipped egg yolks. This made the buttercream very creamy and thick. We added some melted chocolate to the buttercream to make it chocolate flavoured.  To decorate the cake, we masked it first (I actually did ok with this) then piped a basket weave. Yes I said that I would never become a basket weaver, but here I was weaving a basket once again! I have to say that I laughed at myself a little when I heard we would be doing this.  To pipe this design we used two different tips; a plain round piping tip and a flat piping tip that you would typically use when piping roses. We would pipe a vertical line with the plain tip, then pipe two horizontal lines (one at the bottom then one 3/4 of the way up)accross this line. To continue we piped another vertical line directly next to the line before and placed the horizontal lines above where the previous line were....I'm not sure if I'm explaining this very well. I was very happy with how the cake turned out in the end. At first I didn't think that I woul have enough time and would have to rush to do the basket design, but I pulled it off! Finally, to finish off the devils food cake with passion fruit white chocolate ganache, we made a dark chocolate glaze and poured it over the cake. We did this before taking the cake out of the ring, that way the ganache would stay on the top of the cake. What was sort of interesting about the glaze we made was this mirror glaze that we added to it. It was a clear liquid that came in a bucket, and when you add it to a glaze, it becomes very shiny.
Both cakes turned out very well, and I think that my instructor is liking my work. So, yay!

The devils food cake with passion fruit white chocolate ganache

The chocolate butter sponge cake with chocolate french buttercream

PS: We cut into the white chocolate mousse cake that I had made the day before and this is what it looks like from the inside

      This week we started with the French instructor again. We will be learning from him for the rest of the term. We're beginning our time with him by focusing on cakes. Tuesday we baked all lab long (four cakes total!) in preparation for the next two labs. So today we used two of the cakes; a white sponge cake and a chocolate sponge cake that we piped and baked into 10 inch wide circles. For the chocolate sponge layers, we made a white chocolate mousse. We used a cake cylinder lined with acetate and placed the first layer of the cake at the bottom. We then piped the mousse, encircling the cake and allowing it to be completely covered. We scattered raspberries on the first layer of mousse, the repeated the entire process with a second layer of cake on top. We covered the third layer of chocolate sponge with white chocolate mousse and smoothed it out. This needed to be frozen for a couple of hours before continuing. Meanwhile, we made a vanilla french buttercream. We sliced the white sponge cake lengthwise in three and took approximately a cup of the buttercream and mixed it with a hazelnut paste to make it a different flavour. The first two layers of the cake had the hazelnut buttercream and were soaked with a sugar syrup, and the top layer of the cake was masked with the vanilla buttercream. Masking is one of the handful of things that I have trouble with. My being a perfectionist makes it very difficult because I'm never satisfied with its smoothness and eveness. I tried my best today to not be too picky and to stop myself from over working the buttercream. We piped the top of the cake with eight rosettes and the bottom with a border. As an added decoration, we piped three little dots in clusters all over the cake. I think it ended up looking quite good. The masking wasn't perfect, but it was fine. Once the mousse cake had frozen, we unmolded the cake and made a dark chocolate ganache. We were supposed to pour the ganache all over the cake in one shot having it cover the entire cake. This is somewhat difficult because you only have one shot to cover the whole cake and you must do this before the ganache starts to set. Luckily I managed to cover the majority of the cake with the ganache, however some areas had a little too much that had set too quickly. But that was OK, because it was still pretty good in my eyes. Once the ganache had set, we decorated the border of the cake with any leftover butter cream ( I couldn't do this because I didn't have any left, so I whipped some cream and used that) and decorated the top with some melted white chocoalte that we piped into little designs.
I was very pleased with the way that both of my cakes turned out. Especially compared to how some of my classmates' turned out, mine looked very good! I had them graded. He said that the white sponge cake was ok, but the masking needed a little practice. However he said that my white chocolate mousse cake  was "almost perfect" which is a huge compliment coming from this instructor. He is very strict and rarely has a compliment to give about your work. So I was over the moon!
Tomorrow, we decorate our two remaining cakes. Four cakes in two days.... it's a good thing that it's Emma's birthday this weekend!

The white sponge cake with vanilla buttercream

 The chocolate sponge layers with white chocolate mousse and raspberries covered in a chocolate ganache

           Today, our instructor decided to take it a little easier on us seeing as he had us rolling bread dough the other day for five hours. So, we made pretzels and bagels! I was really looking forward to making these recipes because I have attempted to make both before and I was curious about how much better they would turn out this time. We made both doughs, both were fairly basic. After letting both rise, we divided the bagels into 140g portions and rolled them into tubes. Once all the tubes were even in width and length, we wet the ends a little and rolled both ends ensuring they stuck together. The pretzels were similar; we cut the dough into equal sized portions, rolled them into thin and long tubes, and shaped them into pretzels. Both the doughs rested for a little while. Once the bagels were ready, we placed them into boiling water for just a few seconds. You're actually supposed to let them boil until they float to the top, however THIS IS A LIE! It's a lie because they can always float. All the recipes I have ever followed, including todays, says to wait until they float. This is frustrating to me because I had no indicator for when they were done baking... so I basically guessed. Once they had all boiled, we topped them with whatever we wanted (in my case sesame seeds mixed with poppy seeds, and cinnamon sugar) and baked them until golden. They looked fantastic, if I say so myself! For the pretzels, the next step was the strangest. Once the dough had almost doubled in size, we dipped them in a lye solution. This was a little frightening because this is a very corrosive acid and if it touches your skin, it will burn you severely. We had to wear protective goggles and gloves. This was a first for me! The reason why you must dip them in this solution is because this is what will give them their dark brown colour. Some people forgot to dip some of their pretzels and once they had baked, the difference in colours was dramatic! I also think that this is what gives them their "pretzely" flavour. These then got a good dusting of salt and baked them until golden. I was very happy with how both of these recipes turned out, and I had a bagel for dinner and it was delicious!

       Tuesday's lab made me realize that I can never take up basket weaving as a hobby. Here's why. We made a decorative bread platter. What this really means is you use bread to make a fancy looking platter to hold food. My instructor explained that this is what chef's do to show off! We made a basic brad dough and a similar dough with cocoa powder. We divided each dough into many equal sized portions and rolled them as far as we could. After letting these rest for a little, we rolled them again seeing as this will stop the dough from reverting back to its original shape. Rolling out all these pieces of dough took a very long time. A VERY long time. It may have felt longer than it actually was since it was all repetition and boring. When all the pieces were ready, we weaved the chocolate dough and the plain dough together in a very intricate pattern. This was also a very long process and a little boring as well. Once the weaving was done though, it looked very good and impressive! We then rolled out three very large ropes of chocolate dough, and braided them. This was the border for the platter. We were supposed to make flowers out of the dough, but seeing as the instructor didn't show us how, I kind of made it up. The entire platter then baked until golden. It looked very cool in the end, and possibly worth the five hours it took to make it. Yep, five hours of rolling and weaving dough. I'm not sure what I will use it for, so I froze it hoping that an occasion worthy of this fancy bread platter will arise.
Voila!

         Friday we continued with the petits fours, but in tart form! We made Lemon Hazelnut Barquettes and Pistachio Mousseline tarts. We started by making a hazelnut short dough that we were using for both tarts. This was a very soft short dough so it was easy to fit in the tins. We made a lemon curd for the first tarts. All the ingredients went into a pot over a bain marie and were whisked like mad until thick. Meanwhile we made a Swiss meringue. You make this the same way you start a butter cream- whipping egg whites and adding boiling sugar-water. Once the tart shells had baked, we piped the lemon curd first, then topped the curd with the swiss meringue that we later torched (just like a lemon meringue pie)! The reason why this recipe is called a Barquette was because we were supposed to bake the shells in boat shaped tins called Barquettes. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough of these special tins for everyone. For the pistachio mousselines, we started by making a pastry cream, adding a little pistachio paste. Pistachio paste is very strange looking because it is very thick, and a dark forest green. It's weird and smells even weirder. When the pastry cream had cooled, we added a little of the Swiss meringue that we had made before. We painted the inside of the hazelnut tarts with a little chocolate and dipped the rims in ground pistachios. Then the mousseline went in and the tart was topped off with a crystallized pistachio that the instructor had made for us. I must say that both tarts looked impressive and although they were quite a bit of work, they looked and tasted good. My favourite was the lemon curd and meringue tart. I love lemon curd...
The bad news is that I brought these tarts home the same day I brought the petits fours cakes home and they also suffered during the car ride. It's not that I was driving like a crazy woman, it was that the boxes kept shifting whenever I would take a turn...Oops! Again!

          Next came the petits fours! Wednesday we made an almond sponge cake and a pound cake that we would later layer with fillings and cut into bite sized cylinders. These desserts are common in Europe for high tea or other events. You don't commonly see these little cakes in North America and I think that it's because they're such a pain to make! Seeing as these desserts are all individual, bite sized and often decorated, they take a long time to make. With the almond sponge cake, we baked it in a sheet, cut it into three equal rectangles and layered it with rasperry jam. Then, we rolled and cut a rectangle of almond paste that fit on top of the cake. This chilled while we made the next cake. Then came the the pound cake that we also baked in a sheet and cut into equal sized rectangles. This was layered with a chocolate ganache and vanilla butter cream that we prepared like the lab before. Both of the cakes were then cut with a circular cookie cutter. Let me tell you that this was more difficult than it sounds! My fingertips were actually hurting me a little after this because you had to push with quite a bit of force in order to get the cookie cutter all the way to the bottom of the cake. Another problem was that the cookie cutter was much shorter than the cake, so I managed to somehow reassemble the cakes... I had to get creative. For the raspberry filled cake, we warmed up a little liquid white fondant and poured it over, attempting to cover the entire petit four. The issue I had was that I didn't warm up the fondant enough and didn't add enough sugar-water to thin it out, so you will see in the photos that the fondant didn't quite drip to the bottoms. For the chocolate cake, we spread a little more butter cream along the edges of the cylinders and rolled the cakes with rolled out almond paste. To finish off these petits fours, we piped a little more ganache on the tops. I was pleased with how the cakes turned out... although I'm not in much of a hurry to make these finicky desserts again.

I didn't take the pictures until after I drove all the way home to Hamilton. It is apparent in the pictures that the cakes had a rough ride home and may have toppled over...Oops!

        Tuesday, we made something that was very relatable to my life; Opera Cake. I had never heard of this before, but it is aparently something that is fairly popular, especially in Europe. It is a sponge cake with ground almonds that you bake in a sheet, then cut into three long rectangles. We layered the cake with a "medium" chocolate ganache (more fluid), a coffee flavoured butter cream and a "hard" chocolate ganache (less fluid). First, we prepared the butter cream. The way you make a proper butter cream is different from how you would normally make one by creaming together the ingredients. You make it in a way so that the egg whites come up to a high enough temperature so that they are basically cooked. You whip egg whites like crazy until they reach a soft peak, then add a little sugar and whip until a stiff peak forms. Meanwhile, you boil very little water with quite a bit of sugar until the bubbles are small and compact. Once the whites are whipped, you slowly add the boiled mixture and continue fiercely whipping the whites until the bowl is no longer warm on the bottom. Combining the boiled sugar-water and the whipped whites at just the right moment was a little difficult seeing as both have a very small window of time in which they are at the perfect condition and can easily be brought too far. I have made this kind of butter cream before, however for some reason I was having an off day. I made the butter cream a total of FOUR TIMES! Needless to say, I was getting a little frustrated by the end and never wanted to see butter cream again. I finally managed to make it properly, however I was behind the other students in the class. Luckily my classmates had extra medium ganache, so I was able to use theirs instead of making it myself from start to finish. We put a little melted chocolate on the bottom of one piece of cake, then layered it with a coffee syrup (made by the instructor), buttercream and the medium ganache. Then came the next layer that we prepared just as before. The top piece of cake then went on along with the rest of the buttercream and coffee syrup. To finish it off, we poured the hard ganache over the top, letting it slightly drip over the sides. The cake needed to chill before we sliced it into twelve equal mini rectangles. What made them a little interesting was that we piped the word "opera" in chocolate on the tops of each. I must say, they looked lovely! What was too bad was that my lovely sister and talented opera singer, Emma wasn't home to try the desserts. A picture will have to do the trick! They also tasted very good, so I will maybe have to make them again for her. Maybe the day she stars in a national opera?!