Plated Desserts

This past week, we were finishing out cake practical and making some plated desserts are well as sauces.

 Sauces are quite easy to make, But there are many different uses for them... as I found out in a demo. You can add thickeners,  then freeze it to make a shape, and when it defrosts on the plate it will hold it's shape.

I enjoyed finding out some of the many ways to use different ingredients

 The plated dessert I did was a passion fruit and lemon frozen souffle. The second I pulled the souffle out of the freeze it started melting since it was so hot outside. The picture showed the souffle on the bottom and that caused all kinds of problems actually, since everything just slid around on the plate while it was melting.

Overall I think that it would have been better to have a different shape (Like in my own) or placed it in a different spot on the plate. like on the top.

Perhaps like:

tuile - cylinder filled with custard on the bottom, sweet paste cookie on top of that, pipped creme fraishe,(?)  then the souffle on top of that, with maybe a sprig of mint or something leafy.

The cake practical went well, I though the flavours of my cake wouldn't have went together as well as they did, but the flavours and the colours went together well, the only thing it lacked was on the outside, and that was the decoration.

It was simply, too simple. But I feel like I did well.

Cakes

Making cakes is quite the experience. The mocha layered cake was super interesting for me, never have I made so many layers in such a small cake.

And the flavour was quite good as well.

Making the jaconde with the stencil on it, was fun too. I liked finding out how to get the stencil on, as it didn't occur to me before how it got on, although it I'm not sure how it would get on a round cake.

piping the success cake was certainly interesting, I found that getting half of the batter was harder to eyeball than I thought since I obviously had one that was a bit too small.

Making different cake was certainly interesting, spongecake with some added butter at the end, mixing with a bit of the batter so the butter mixed in easiler.

I enjoy cakes, seeing as you make the layers, then put them together and make something pretty out of it all.

The petit four practical at the beginning of the week actually surprisingly went well, I feel like I did my best, working hard enough to get the grade that I did, a 92. Learnt somethings.

Made a good tasting tea cake, although the almond paste over whelmed it a bit.

My macaroons however tasted a bit dry and the filling wasn't solid enough yet. So I feel like I could have done much better than them. Super disappointed in them overall.

Macaroons with honey butter cream, Strawberry tartlets with cracked black pepper

and Macha tea cakes.

This week was overall exhausting for some reason, but I feel like it was a good week anyways.

Petits Fours

Petits fours, which are little dainties in a sense, are quite fun to make. You can make all different kinds and combine different things together.

They are quite.... imaginative to make, all you really have to do is match flavours together and make something out of them.

Like a Strawberry tarts with cracked black pepper on top perhaps, maybe with a simple custard under the strawberry.

The idea of reworking desserts to be small and bit sized is always a fun thought as well. it's like making a tiny tea sized version of a larger thing, sometimes small cuter things are more appealing, and easier to eat of course.

This week was actually quite good, I enjoy making different things except for the petits fours glance.

The dipping of those was quite difficult, didn't really enjoy that, however I enjoyed making the designs on them.

 A napoleon, quite delicious, I had never had one before so I was surprised by it's taste, I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Me and harley are teamed to make petits fours together this is the almost end of our opera cake, I cant wait to see how it tastes at the end.

Chocolate

A week of chocolate sounds amazing doesn't it?

 If you're warned that it isn't all fun and games then taking it to heart is probably best.

Chocolate tempering is one of the hardest things to do if the conditions aren't right, if it's too hot your chocolate may never temper, you'd be lucky to get one bowl of chocolate to temper properly.

 Tempering Chocolate

Upon tasting chocolate, I found that I like white chocolate the best, it seemed to melt nicely in my mouth and leave a lovely flavour, however I found out that the worst tasting chocolate is the 100% kind, It takes an amazing amount of time to melt in your mouth leaves a horrible bitter after taste (which might I add stays in your mouth for as long as it took to melt in there, maybe longer) It's not  very pleasant.

Thursday September 06, we picked out different chocolates to make, and my partner and I, picked Marco Polo Chocolates, and Coffee Pralines.

I was delighted by the taste of the chocolate used to make the Marco Polo Chocolates, as they reminded me of hedge hogs that you can by at chocolate stores. 

I didn't think I would like the Coffee Pralines, since I'm not a fan of coffee, however, we successfully managed to temper chocolate and make a strong coffee smelling filling. Upon tasting our successful chocolate I was delighted to find it tasted amazing. 

 Coffee Pralines

Hopefully Friday will be a temper friendly day, so I may finish my chocolate cigarettes. They don't really look like cigarettes, more like striped tubes that you suck milk out of, but that's okay. 

 

Patisserie

Monday August 27 was the first day of Patisserie two.

We made a Poole, and a Leaven to start out baguettes. which took around 3 days to make. We also measured out our white bread recipe

On Tuesday the 28th we shaped the baguettes, and make sticky buns. and started out faux sour dough recipe, and started out brioche leaving it to retard in the fridge over night. 

On wednesday the 29th we made our sour dough starter into a sponge, 

We shaped out brioche into 30g rolls, and made sweet tart dough to put on top of the brioche to made them look like little mushrooms. If you roll out the sweet dough thin enough then it will crack and look like shiitake mushrooms.

We also fried up out english muffins which tasted quite nice, and made potato foccacia dough which we also left to retard in the fridge at night

Unfortunately we all left out baguettes in the oven for a little too long but they were still alright to eat. Very crisp and hard.

Thursday the 30th after helping the chef's and the Dean with his event which lasted from two to four or five-ish, we cooked off our potato foccacia, however they all turned out differently and different sizes as well.

We also cooked out sourdough, after shaping it into a boule (round bowl shape) and slashing it. Mine looked like the demented warty one. I was not happy at all.

We started out Byalis and I assume we will finish it Today ( Friday ) we retarded it in the fridge over night.

We also filled the brioche, however we failed at making the filling, as we didn't make the whipping cream stiff enough to mix in. leaving our filling a bit liquidy.

Friday we will finish out bread and have a dinner together.

Elaine L.