Well, the not-being-on-my-game-ness didn't wear off today. I don't think there has been a day yet this year where everyone in the class collectively was just having a bad day. A group of frustrated / irritable / anxious / stressed out / pissed off baking students does not make for successful pastry creations. Lots of mistakes today. For pretty much everyone. I don't know if it's that maybe everyone just didn't get enough sleep this week or something, but there was definitely something in the air today. It could be that we were all working on the detailed decoration stuff for whatever we baked, so no one was really creating new things, but just making annoying small things that involved melting and tempering chocolate or handling really really hot sugar while it burned into your hand. (I was doing the chocolate stuff, not the sugar stuff. I don't know which is better.)
The day started out relatively fine. We made a frangipane tart, which is a sweet dough crust and frangipane cream, baked in a fluted tart pan. The sweet dough was already made, so I rolled it out and placed it in the pan while my partner made the frangipane cream and then piped it in. Quick and relatively painless.
After this, we had to cut our marshmallow slab into whatever shape we wanted. We used a cookie cutter to make little circle marshmallows, mostly because we just wanted to do something easy. Once we had cut them out, we dusted them in an icing sugar / corn starch mixture and packed them up for Sunday's event. We had a ton of extra marshmallow stuff left over, which is inevitable when you are using a circle cookie cutter. We didn't really want to throw it out, but we weren't sure what to do with it either. Eventually, we dusted this in icing sugar and corn starch too and put them in a bag and Jean-Luc said that we could use them to bake something next week (e.g. Rocky Road Brownies). This was the opposite of the marshmallow experience we had yesterday. As in, this was actually easy and fun.
And... it went downhill from there.
First we had to make some chocolate decorations for our little NY Style Cheesecakes that we made yesterday. So, that meant melting and tempering chocolate -- our favourite. Once the chocolate was tempered, we had to spread it in a thin layer onto two sheets of acetate with a pink cocoa butter heart design on them. After the chocolate started to set, we used a heart cookie cutter and a circle cookie cutter to cut out chocolate hearts and circles. Then we put them in the blast freezer for a bit. Once we took them out, we separated the shapes, placed them on a baking tray, and set them aside until we finish off the actual cheesecakes. The finished cheesecakes will have a bit of lemon cream, and be topped with the little chocolate shapes we made today and berries. Adorable.
At the cutting out the chocolate part, Jean-Luc came by and gave us the sketchiest look I have seen so far this year (and not as a joke this time). I think he was sincerely disappointed in us. The chocolate wasn't tempered enough, so it wasn't setting evenly, which was messing up our ability to cut out the shapes and have them still look nice. And the layer of chocolate spread on the acetate sheets were too thick and uneven, which was impeding the setting process and just generally screwing everything up. That said, the sheet with the circles on it had a more even layer of chocolate and the circles were easier to cut out and remove once they had hardened, so we salvaged more of those than the hearts. Jean-Luc said the circles actually looked good. Phew.
After the cheesecake decorating disaster, we moved onto making the decorations for our pumpkin cake which also required melting and tempering chocolate, much to our chagrin. (Mostly mine, because I ended up tempering the chocolate fairly often. Chocolate. Everywhere.) While the chocolate was melting, I made cool-looking rings out of isomalt, which is a form of sugar that looks like little hail pellets. I mixed the isomalt with a little bit of gold dust (!) and then put it in a savarin mould, which happens to be the same pan we used for cheesecakes yesterday [except yesterday I thought Jean-Luc was saying "savanna mould" which didn't make any sense to me]. Then they were baked for about 10 minutes, until the isomalt had completely melted. You are left with these clear (gold-tinted, in this case) rings that can be used for decoration. They look really cool. So, a brief break from chocolate work was nice. It didn't last long though. (I am going to be really happy when this fundraiser is over. Just saying.)
We were making the decorations that Jean-Luc demonstrated when he did the pumpkin milk chocolate cake over a series of days before Thanksgiving. This included a large flat piece of chocolate with yellow and orange streaks in it, done by brushing a piece of acetate with yellow cocoa butter, orange cocoa butter, a little bit of yellow colouring, and then spreading the chocolate over it and then letting it harden. When the cocoa butter was brushed on, there was a little too much yellow and not enough orange, so our chocolate is pretty much streaked all yellow. It still looks cool, but more orange would've been better. Also, I did a not ideal job of spreading out the chocolate smoothly (but at least I wasn't in charge of the brushing the colour AND spreading out the chocolate and messing up BOTH). Then, we had to make chocolate swirls. We cut out strips of acetate, spread the chocolate over it, and then used a chocolate comb and combed it through the chocolate. This was placed on a baking tray and after it had set for a few seconds, we twisted the acetate into a swirl and let the chocolate harden like that. It was kind of awkward to work with because it was hard to make the chocolate stay where you wanted it to while it was setting. I think overall they will look okay, but for now, they are still on the strips of acetate until we actually put them on our cake.
As I reflect on the day, it doesn't seem as bad as it actually felt at the time. But I guess that comes with any sort of reflecting / hindsight. No one in the class was feeling it today. Maybe because Mercury is in retrograde, but that's just me... Tomorrow is Friday though and I think we all need a weekend. The only problem with that is a bunch of us (me included) are coming in on Saturday too. Sigh.
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Today's Recipes
New York Style Cheesecake
Frangipane Tart
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Egg white omelette, anyone?
I was definitely off my game today. I was also sort of off my game
yesterday too. I hope this doesn't last the whole week... Apologies in
advance because there are absolutely no pictures in this post. We just
didn't entirely complete anything and the stages that our desserts were
in by the end of the day didn't really warrant photographic evidence.
We started with finishing off the last of the recipe instructions in our giant booklet. Once we got to the kitchen, Jean-Luc assigned us the New York Style Cheesecake. But, instead of the large one with the graham cracker crust, we were going to make little ones in a silicone pan (sort of shallow donut shapes) and the "crust" was just going to be a bit of white chocolate. That way, this dessert would be gluten-free. I thought that the cheesecake would be easy as pie (or, cheesecake...) because I'm so used to making it. But then I started to doubt myself and my abilities and I sort of psyched myself out. It was fairly straightforward, except that this recipe called for a few things that I don't use in my cheesecakes (e.g. sour cream). After mixing everything in, we scooped it into the pan, right to the top. After they had baked for about 20 minutes, we let them come down to room temperature and then put them in the blast freezer for a while. Once they had hardened, we took them out and used our fingers to spread a thin layer of white chocolate on the tops (that would become the bottom) and then we popped them out of the pan and set them on a baking tray. After they were all done, we covered them and put them in the fridge. I think we are probably going to be topping them with fruit of some sort, but probably not til later in the week.
After this, we worked on our pumpkin cake from yesterday. I really love the cake part of this, because it's super moist and really delicious. I didn't think I would like a pumpkin cake, but it just takes like fall and it's really yummy. I may have taken the extra cake home and eaten it with whipped cream on top of it for "lunch"... We had to cut the cake into three pieces (we were only using two layers, hence the extra), and trim it to slightly smaller than a large cake ring. Then, we made the filling, which was essentially a milk chocolate ganache that we added whipped cream to once it was cooled down. EXCEPT, I didn't let the ganache cool in the blast freezer long enough, because once we added the whipped cream to it, the mixture (which was supposed to be a buttercream consistency) was just really, really runny. Before Jean-Luc could even say anything when I took it out of the fridge I just prefaced showing it to him with, "I think I did something wrong." That's when he told me that it must be because I didn't let the ganache mixture cool down enough. We poured it onto the cake anyway; it would just take a much longer time to set. After a half-hour chill in the blast freezer, we put it in the regular freezer. I also made a milk chocolate miroir, which is just a fancy name for a glaze, I think. This was also like making a ganache. After this was done, it went in the fridge too. We're going to finish up the cake (glaze and decorations) later in the week. But we're essentially making the same cake that Jean-Luc demonstrated for us before Thanksgiving. The decorations include chocolate swirls and circles and other crazy things, which is great because there's nothing I love more than chocolate work...
Our last task of the day was when things really started going awry. It was all because of the egg whites. When you use eggs and you are whipping them, Jean-Luc keeps telling us that they are supposed to be at room temperature, because they whip better. But, every time I tried to heat up the egg whites, they just started to cook. They were cold and were taking forever to warm up and then suddenly they were cooked. I sort of lost it on my second time and then my partner took over the egg white part. While this was happening, we were also heating up a sugar mixture and a gelatin/vanilla/Arabic gum mixture. We were supposed to start whipping the egg whites when the sugar was at a strong boil. But, even though we did this, while I was watching the sugar, Jean-Luc told my partner that she had already over-mixed the egg whites. (They sort of looked like what you think clouds would feel like.) So, we had to do the egg whites for the FOURTH time. This time, Jean-Luc said to just put them in the bowl and not bother with heating them up. While the whites were mixing, we were waiting for the sugar mixture to get to 120 degrees celsius. Once this was done (actually, we got to about 118), the egg whites weren't quite ready so Jean-Luc increased the speed on the KitchenAid and let them whip for a little bit longer. He said that it was okay for the sugar to wait a bit for the egg whites, but not the other way around. After it had formed soft peaks, I think, I got the okay to pour the sugar mixture in slowly. After that was incorporated, we poured the gelatin in. Then, we let it mix until it formed stiff peaks. Once the mixture was ready, we placed it on a greased sheet of parchment paper dusted with corn starch and icing sugar (I initially put way too much grease on it, so we had to wipe it down and then re-dust... sigh). The mixture went right in the centre of the parchment paper, we added some more corn starch/icing sugar on top, placed a second greased/dusted sheet of parchment paper over it, and then rolled it out with our rolling pins using the metal rulers. They were about half an inch thick, if I had to guess. Then, we saran-wrapped it and set it aside. We're not going to cut it into the shapes that we want -- I'm not sure what those are yet. I do NOT like making marshmallows. I am pretty sure I will never voluntarily do this again. Highlight of this process (surprising that there even was one): when Jean-Luc saw our discarded KitchenAids filled with egg whites and said, "Hey, Safia, were you making an egg white omelette here?" And I just replied, "Yes."
Overall, I do like doing the stuff for the fundraiser because it does seem like a much less intense pace even though we are making so much stuff. But, today was not ideal. So, hopefully tomorrow will be better...
---
Today's Recipes
New York Style Cheesecake
Pumpkin Milk Chocolate Cake
Marshmallow
We started with finishing off the last of the recipe instructions in our giant booklet. Once we got to the kitchen, Jean-Luc assigned us the New York Style Cheesecake. But, instead of the large one with the graham cracker crust, we were going to make little ones in a silicone pan (sort of shallow donut shapes) and the "crust" was just going to be a bit of white chocolate. That way, this dessert would be gluten-free. I thought that the cheesecake would be easy as pie (or, cheesecake...) because I'm so used to making it. But then I started to doubt myself and my abilities and I sort of psyched myself out. It was fairly straightforward, except that this recipe called for a few things that I don't use in my cheesecakes (e.g. sour cream). After mixing everything in, we scooped it into the pan, right to the top. After they had baked for about 20 minutes, we let them come down to room temperature and then put them in the blast freezer for a while. Once they had hardened, we took them out and used our fingers to spread a thin layer of white chocolate on the tops (that would become the bottom) and then we popped them out of the pan and set them on a baking tray. After they were all done, we covered them and put them in the fridge. I think we are probably going to be topping them with fruit of some sort, but probably not til later in the week.
After this, we worked on our pumpkin cake from yesterday. I really love the cake part of this, because it's super moist and really delicious. I didn't think I would like a pumpkin cake, but it just takes like fall and it's really yummy. I may have taken the extra cake home and eaten it with whipped cream on top of it for "lunch"... We had to cut the cake into three pieces (we were only using two layers, hence the extra), and trim it to slightly smaller than a large cake ring. Then, we made the filling, which was essentially a milk chocolate ganache that we added whipped cream to once it was cooled down. EXCEPT, I didn't let the ganache cool in the blast freezer long enough, because once we added the whipped cream to it, the mixture (which was supposed to be a buttercream consistency) was just really, really runny. Before Jean-Luc could even say anything when I took it out of the fridge I just prefaced showing it to him with, "I think I did something wrong." That's when he told me that it must be because I didn't let the ganache mixture cool down enough. We poured it onto the cake anyway; it would just take a much longer time to set. After a half-hour chill in the blast freezer, we put it in the regular freezer. I also made a milk chocolate miroir, which is just a fancy name for a glaze, I think. This was also like making a ganache. After this was done, it went in the fridge too. We're going to finish up the cake (glaze and decorations) later in the week. But we're essentially making the same cake that Jean-Luc demonstrated for us before Thanksgiving. The decorations include chocolate swirls and circles and other crazy things, which is great because there's nothing I love more than chocolate work...
Our last task of the day was when things really started going awry. It was all because of the egg whites. When you use eggs and you are whipping them, Jean-Luc keeps telling us that they are supposed to be at room temperature, because they whip better. But, every time I tried to heat up the egg whites, they just started to cook. They were cold and were taking forever to warm up and then suddenly they were cooked. I sort of lost it on my second time and then my partner took over the egg white part. While this was happening, we were also heating up a sugar mixture and a gelatin/vanilla/Arabic gum mixture. We were supposed to start whipping the egg whites when the sugar was at a strong boil. But, even though we did this, while I was watching the sugar, Jean-Luc told my partner that she had already over-mixed the egg whites. (They sort of looked like what you think clouds would feel like.) So, we had to do the egg whites for the FOURTH time. This time, Jean-Luc said to just put them in the bowl and not bother with heating them up. While the whites were mixing, we were waiting for the sugar mixture to get to 120 degrees celsius. Once this was done (actually, we got to about 118), the egg whites weren't quite ready so Jean-Luc increased the speed on the KitchenAid and let them whip for a little bit longer. He said that it was okay for the sugar to wait a bit for the egg whites, but not the other way around. After it had formed soft peaks, I think, I got the okay to pour the sugar mixture in slowly. After that was incorporated, we poured the gelatin in. Then, we let it mix until it formed stiff peaks. Once the mixture was ready, we placed it on a greased sheet of parchment paper dusted with corn starch and icing sugar (I initially put way too much grease on it, so we had to wipe it down and then re-dust... sigh). The mixture went right in the centre of the parchment paper, we added some more corn starch/icing sugar on top, placed a second greased/dusted sheet of parchment paper over it, and then rolled it out with our rolling pins using the metal rulers. They were about half an inch thick, if I had to guess. Then, we saran-wrapped it and set it aside. We're not going to cut it into the shapes that we want -- I'm not sure what those are yet. I do NOT like making marshmallows. I am pretty sure I will never voluntarily do this again. Highlight of this process (surprising that there even was one): when Jean-Luc saw our discarded KitchenAids filled with egg whites and said, "Hey, Safia, were you making an egg white omelette here?" And I just replied, "Yes."
Overall, I do like doing the stuff for the fundraiser because it does seem like a much less intense pace even though we are making so much stuff. But, today was not ideal. So, hopefully tomorrow will be better...
---
Today's Recipes
New York Style Cheesecake
Pumpkin Milk Chocolate Cake
Marshmallow
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Baking FUNdraiser
The first hour of class today was in the Demonstration Theatre (oooh), but only because Jean-Luc was giving us the instructions for a giant package of recipes that we just received. We didn't even get through the whole thing. I'm glad I'm used to taking really detailed notes. It definitely came in handy later. The recipes are for an event that's happening this Sunday -- A Chocolate Affaire. It's a fundraiser for Northwood, which is a seniors' living facility in Halifax.
The event showcases chocolate creations from various organizations including us (obviously), Chez Tess, Lindt, Northwood chefs, and Chocolates by Design, among others. It's a pretty big deal. I think this is the 10th year (it used to be called "Pinch of Love: A Chocolate Affair" but now it's just "The Halifax Chocolate Affaire").
The class was divided into two groups (Buffet A and Buffet B) and we were going to form pairs in our groups and each pair was going to make a few things from the recipe package. He said that we wouldn't all be able to make everything, but some of the recipes are featured in the next set of rotations. So, even if we don't make them now, it doesn't mean that we never will.
First, my partner and I both had to finish our chocolate Halloween scenes on our sponge cakes. I was really happy to get that out of the way. I was going to add things to mine and adjust the placement of some stuff, but then I just decided against it because the chocolate was so temperamental and I didn't really want to deal with it anymore. So, definitely not my best work, but it would have to do.
After that, we made the mixture for Chocolate Pillows. After making the mixture, we divided it into three and placed it in the fridge to cool and harden. Then, after about an hour and a half-ish, we took it out of the fridge and shaped it into balls and then rolled these out into three even logs. I have no idea what the final product will be for these because the consistency by the end of the day today was very strange. It was a semi-sweet chocolate / ground almonds / flour mixture that was log-shaped... so, you can imagine what they might look like. Not too appetizing. Eventually, we'll cut them into slices to make 36 pillows and bake them. Stay tuned for developments there.
The next recipe we tacked was almond brittle, which was one of the ones I was hoping we would get to do. I love peanut brittle A LOT, so I was excited to learn how to make it. We heated up the sugar/water/glucose mixture to 115 degrees and then folded in some roughly chopped almonds. Once this mixture caramelized and reached around 155 degrees, we added in our salt, vanilla, and butter. Once the butter was melted, we added the baking powder. The mixture rose a little in the pot and then we poured it onto a silicone mat, placed another one on top, and rolled over it with a rolling pin, trying to make it as thin as possible. Once this was done, while the brittle was still warm, we stretched it out and cut pieces off with scissors. (Jean-Luc said that you could also wait til it was slightly cooler and cut into any desired shape or let it cool completely and just cut it into pieces. Stretching it out while it's still warm makes it really thin and easy to bite into though.) After it was done, I basically had to remove the tray from our table because we kept eating pieces of it. Jean-Luc said we could basically use any nuts that we wanted (almonds, peanuts, pecans, etc.) and I definitely plan to make a bunch of brittle at home with this amazingly delicious recipe.
The last recipe we did today was the pumpkin milk chocolate cake that Jean-Luc demonstrated a while ago and that one of the restaurant groups got to make already. This was essentially like a sponge, except it also had pumpkin puree in it. First, we heated up the eggs and sugar, then whisked on high speed until they almost quadrupled in size. This was then folded into the pumpkin puree, a little at first to loosen it up, then the rest. Then the dry ingredients were folded in as well. The mixture was pretty runny when it went into the cake ring. We placed some foil under it so that it wouldn't seep all over the place. By the time it had finally finished baking it was time to leave, so we set it on a cooling rack and Jean-Luc said he'd take it from there. We're going to finish off the milk chocolate part tomorrow.
A lot of people are itching to start the new set of rotations, but I sort of like all of us working on different things. It means that you can basically work at whatever speed you want, because it's not until you're done that Jean-Luc comes over and gives you something else to do. You still have to work relatively quickly, obviously. But the people who are already super fast just move on to the next thing faster and don't have to wait around for the slower people in their group and the slower people can also work more at their own pace and don't have to feel like they are holding everyone up. Who knows if I'll feel as optimistic about this tomorrow, but I feel good about it now.
Oh, also, he asked for volunteers to come in on Saturday to finish off the last few things before the event. I figured since I'm not going to the actual event, I might as well come in on one day of the weekend. Besides, being in the kitchen when there aren't a billion other people there is kind of nice. Almost relaxing. Almost.
---
Today's Recipes
Chocolate Pillows
Almond Brittle
Pumpkin Milk Chocolate Cake
The event showcases chocolate creations from various organizations including us (obviously), Chez Tess, Lindt, Northwood chefs, and Chocolates by Design, among others. It's a pretty big deal. I think this is the 10th year (it used to be called "Pinch of Love: A Chocolate Affair" but now it's just "The Halifax Chocolate Affaire").
The class was divided into two groups (Buffet A and Buffet B) and we were going to form pairs in our groups and each pair was going to make a few things from the recipe package. He said that we wouldn't all be able to make everything, but some of the recipes are featured in the next set of rotations. So, even if we don't make them now, it doesn't mean that we never will.
First, my partner and I both had to finish our chocolate Halloween scenes on our sponge cakes. I was really happy to get that out of the way. I was going to add things to mine and adjust the placement of some stuff, but then I just decided against it because the chocolate was so temperamental and I didn't really want to deal with it anymore. So, definitely not my best work, but it would have to do.
After that, we made the mixture for Chocolate Pillows. After making the mixture, we divided it into three and placed it in the fridge to cool and harden. Then, after about an hour and a half-ish, we took it out of the fridge and shaped it into balls and then rolled these out into three even logs. I have no idea what the final product will be for these because the consistency by the end of the day today was very strange. It was a semi-sweet chocolate / ground almonds / flour mixture that was log-shaped... so, you can imagine what they might look like. Not too appetizing. Eventually, we'll cut them into slices to make 36 pillows and bake them. Stay tuned for developments there.
The next recipe we tacked was almond brittle, which was one of the ones I was hoping we would get to do. I love peanut brittle A LOT, so I was excited to learn how to make it. We heated up the sugar/water/glucose mixture to 115 degrees and then folded in some roughly chopped almonds. Once this mixture caramelized and reached around 155 degrees, we added in our salt, vanilla, and butter. Once the butter was melted, we added the baking powder. The mixture rose a little in the pot and then we poured it onto a silicone mat, placed another one on top, and rolled over it with a rolling pin, trying to make it as thin as possible. Once this was done, while the brittle was still warm, we stretched it out and cut pieces off with scissors. (Jean-Luc said that you could also wait til it was slightly cooler and cut into any desired shape or let it cool completely and just cut it into pieces. Stretching it out while it's still warm makes it really thin and easy to bite into though.) After it was done, I basically had to remove the tray from our table because we kept eating pieces of it. Jean-Luc said we could basically use any nuts that we wanted (almonds, peanuts, pecans, etc.) and I definitely plan to make a bunch of brittle at home with this amazingly delicious recipe.
The last recipe we did today was the pumpkin milk chocolate cake that Jean-Luc demonstrated a while ago and that one of the restaurant groups got to make already. This was essentially like a sponge, except it also had pumpkin puree in it. First, we heated up the eggs and sugar, then whisked on high speed until they almost quadrupled in size. This was then folded into the pumpkin puree, a little at first to loosen it up, then the rest. Then the dry ingredients were folded in as well. The mixture was pretty runny when it went into the cake ring. We placed some foil under it so that it wouldn't seep all over the place. By the time it had finally finished baking it was time to leave, so we set it on a cooling rack and Jean-Luc said he'd take it from there. We're going to finish off the milk chocolate part tomorrow.
A lot of people are itching to start the new set of rotations, but I sort of like all of us working on different things. It means that you can basically work at whatever speed you want, because it's not until you're done that Jean-Luc comes over and gives you something else to do. You still have to work relatively quickly, obviously. But the people who are already super fast just move on to the next thing faster and don't have to wait around for the slower people in their group and the slower people can also work more at their own pace and don't have to feel like they are holding everyone up. Who knows if I'll feel as optimistic about this tomorrow, but I feel good about it now.
Oh, also, he asked for volunteers to come in on Saturday to finish off the last few things before the event. I figured since I'm not going to the actual event, I might as well come in on one day of the weekend. Besides, being in the kitchen when there aren't a billion other people there is kind of nice. Almost relaxing. Almost.
---
Today's Recipes
Chocolate Pillows
Almond Brittle
Pumpkin Milk Chocolate Cake
Monday, October 28, 2013
Halloween-y things.
Today was almost the last day of testing. Along with another member of my group, I started with piping the chocolate objects that I'd forgotten to do on Friday -- a chocolate fence, and a base for the Halloween scene that would eventually go on the cake. Then we put these in the fridge to cool. (Well, the bases I put in the blast freezer, maybe for a little bit too long. And also before the chocolate could completely harden, the acetate paper blew all over the place and got all crinkled so the chocolate bases were a crazy/not flat shape and we had to trim them around the edges during which I broke about 1/3 of mine off. But it all turned out okay in the end.)
While our chocolate stuff was cooling/hardening, we put our buttercream in a KitchenAid (with a paddle attachment, on medium speed) to soften it up. Then we spread a final layer of icing on our chocolate sponges and ran the decorating comb along the sides for, well, decoration. Jean-Luc said the tops didn't have to be smooth this time, but rather, they were supposed to be wavy, "like Earth". So, that was good. We put these back in the fridge after they were iced, because we had to do more chocolate work and we didn't want the buttercream to melt off of the cakes while we were doing that.
To create our Halloween scene, we were supposed to add the haunted house, a yellow moon, some trees, a fence, a gravestone, a ghost, various Halloween-y animals (birds, bats, cats), grass, and so on to the chocolate base. To do this, Jean-Luc showed us how to melt some of the chocolate on the bottom of whatever object you were sticking on by rubbing it on top of a metal plate that is placed on a pot of hot water. Then, once the chocolate is melted, you place it onto the base and spray some chocolate cooling spray on it. Now, like he usually does, Jean-Luc made this look super easy. What didn't come across while he was demonstrating was that if you happen to take too long to melt the chocolate, the heat from your hands will probably melt the wrong parts of your chocolate and then all of your things will crumble to pieces in your hands. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything. I was really determined to finish today because I just want all of the Halloween stuff to be over, but because this was a shorter class, we had to start cleaning up at 9:10 a.m. At around 9:15 (...), I still wasn't done yet and Jean-Luc said it would be okay to finish it off tomorrow morning. I'm not too pleased about it, but I'd rather finish the little I have to do tomorrow than potentially break everything while in a rush. All I really need to do is put everything onto my cake, which isn't really much. If I'm feeling particularly enthusiastic, I might adjust some of the other things that I stuck on in a hurry. I'm also secretly worried that it will all fall to pieces overnight, so hopefully that doesn't happen (I even reassured the other group member that it wouldn't).
I won't post a picture of the cake until it's finished. But I took some more close-up pictures of my favourite Halloween cookies from last week. Weirdly, the colours in the icing sort of ran a little (particularly the red, green, and black), so the cookies didn't look as great today as they did on Friday. Still cute enough to warrant pictures though.
While our chocolate stuff was cooling/hardening, we put our buttercream in a KitchenAid (with a paddle attachment, on medium speed) to soften it up. Then we spread a final layer of icing on our chocolate sponges and ran the decorating comb along the sides for, well, decoration. Jean-Luc said the tops didn't have to be smooth this time, but rather, they were supposed to be wavy, "like Earth". So, that was good. We put these back in the fridge after they were iced, because we had to do more chocolate work and we didn't want the buttercream to melt off of the cakes while we were doing that.
To create our Halloween scene, we were supposed to add the haunted house, a yellow moon, some trees, a fence, a gravestone, a ghost, various Halloween-y animals (birds, bats, cats), grass, and so on to the chocolate base. To do this, Jean-Luc showed us how to melt some of the chocolate on the bottom of whatever object you were sticking on by rubbing it on top of a metal plate that is placed on a pot of hot water. Then, once the chocolate is melted, you place it onto the base and spray some chocolate cooling spray on it. Now, like he usually does, Jean-Luc made this look super easy. What didn't come across while he was demonstrating was that if you happen to take too long to melt the chocolate, the heat from your hands will probably melt the wrong parts of your chocolate and then all of your things will crumble to pieces in your hands. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything. I was really determined to finish today because I just want all of the Halloween stuff to be over, but because this was a shorter class, we had to start cleaning up at 9:10 a.m. At around 9:15 (...), I still wasn't done yet and Jean-Luc said it would be okay to finish it off tomorrow morning. I'm not too pleased about it, but I'd rather finish the little I have to do tomorrow than potentially break everything while in a rush. All I really need to do is put everything onto my cake, which isn't really much. If I'm feeling particularly enthusiastic, I might adjust some of the other things that I stuck on in a hurry. I'm also secretly worried that it will all fall to pieces overnight, so hopefully that doesn't happen (I even reassured the other group member that it wouldn't).
I won't post a picture of the cake until it's finished. But I took some more close-up pictures of my favourite Halloween cookies from last week. Weirdly, the colours in the icing sort of ran a little (particularly the red, green, and black), so the cookies didn't look as great today as they did on Friday. Still cute enough to warrant pictures though.
 |
| Note: skeletal hand. |
 |
| Adorable and anatomically correct spider. |
 |
| Hard to make the drippy RIP look intentional. |
 |
| I actually LOVE this one. |
 |
| Check out those piping lettering skills. |
Friday, October 25, 2013
Pipe(ing) Dreams
Another day of testing. The things that we had to get done today were:
I managed to finish most of the stuff we had to get done. I didn't finish a few of the chocolate Halloween decorations, but I think we'll still have time to do them on Monday as well. All I have left is to do a mould of chocolate tombstones, pipe a freehand fence, and make a circular-ish shaped base of chocolate for the haunted house that I piped today. On Monday, we finish our Halloween cake, so I'll just have to get the chocolate stuff out of the way first.
Our entire group started with the buttercream first. German buttercream is actually delicious that an explanation won't even do it justice. It is essentially creamed butter and vanilla, whipped pastry cream, and melted semi-sweet chocolate. After mixing the butter and the pastry cream together, a small amount of that is added to the chocolate mixture and then this is added back into the buttercream mixture [also known as tempering]. It. Is. So. Delicious. After this, we cut our cakes into three hopefully even layers, which Jean-Luc inspected before we could go to the next step. He was checking for evenness of the layers and for flour clumps in the middle of the sponge (which I think would mean bad folding technique). After the go-ahead from Jean-Luc, we could ice our cakes. First we brushed each layer with a simple syrup, then added the buttercream. We did this for each layer and the top. Then we iced the sides, waiting for Jean-Luc to give us the okay, and put it back in the fridge. The finishing touches will be for Monday.
At this point, part of the group wanted to do their chocolate work, but I really wanted to pipe my shortbread cookie designs, because I knew that would take longer and not be ideal if rushed. I tried to jump on the chocolate bandwagon, but the chocolate that was melted was getting super lumpy and needed to be re-melted and re-tempered, so I gave up halfway through a cornet full of chocolate. One other group member also wanted to work on her cookies first, so we jumped ship and switched tasks. We had to make a bunch more royal icing and add colour to it to get the colours that we wanted; yesterday, we definitely didn't make enough, so today we were sure to make a lot. It was also easier to work on the piping with only two people sharing a bunch of different colours, as opposed to five. The icing for piping had to be thicker than the icing for glazing, because you didn't want all of your fine piping lines to run into each other, ruining your obviously awesome detail work. I spent some time yesterday coming up with designs, but some of them I just made up on the spot (like a hilarious ghost pastry chef wearing an apron, a hat, and oven mitts). My hands started shaking and cramping up a lot towards the end, so I sort of gave up... Jean-Luc is only marking the best four designs, so I think my weird splotchy spider web pumpkin will be saved from being assigned a grade.
I wish I had taken pictures of some of the other people's cookies... some of them were intensely amazing. Full on silhouettes of witches and black cats and haunted houses; a mummy; a giant spiderweb with spider... the talent of the people in my class really overwhelms me sometimes. The one tricky thing about working with royal icing is that it dries out super quickly, so it's really important to keep your containers covered even for the minute you're not using them. For a first attempt at piping icing onto cookies, I think I did a pretty good job.
Speaking of pretty good jobs... Jean-Luc met with each of us today to tell us about our progress to date in the course. One of the first things he said to me when I met with him (after he said, "The one thing we need to address is your attitude... I'm just kidding." Ha, ha) was, "I really don't have anything bad to say." Apparently, I am doing better in the class than I thought I was. He said that I was talented (!) and that my product was good, especially in the last little bit, and also that I really apply myself and other great things. He, not surprisingly, pointed out that one of the biggest things is that I doubt myself and that I have to try not to get frustrated if I can't do things right away or don't do them right. ("If you burn the sugar twice, I'm not going to give you a mark of 65. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone burns things. Even I burn things.") Fair enough. The only other thing he mentioned was speed, which is an okay problem to have, because we're all just learning. He said that one of the biggest issues that employers have with people who have done this program is speed. But he also said it was okay to be slower for now, but not to get frustrated if he is encouraging us to go a little faster. I am starting to get the feeling he wants me to tone down the frustration a little...? Well, I'll try.
After this and once we were done piping our cookies, I was pretty ready to be done for the day. But I along with one other person from our group still hadn't done my chocolate decorations yet and we technically were supposed to finish them today. After some intense internal conflict, we decided to just get as much as we could over with and that way we wouldn't be rushing through piping chocolate on Monday morning. I am glad that we got it out of the way today (even though we forgot about a few things and also didn't have time to do the moulds), because it will reduce the amount of chocolate work we'll have to do later. Working with chocolate is NOT my favourite. It is just so messy. And gets on EVERYTHING.
I will be glad once all of our Halloween stuff / testing is over. It has been a pretty intense week. I cannot believe it's already Friday again. It feels like I was just washing my uniform for the week (and now I have to do it again).
---
Today's Recipes
German Buttercream
500 g butter
750 g pastry cream
15 ml vanilla
250 g semi-sweet chocolate
Shortbread Cookies
100 g margarine
300 g butter
8 g salt
300 g sugar
15 ml vanilla
2 eggs
25 ml milk
750 g flour
Royal Icing*
500 g icing sugar
85 g egg whites
2 ml lemon juice
food colouring (various)
*Add water to thin it out
*Add icing sugar to thicken
- Make German buttercream for our chocolate sponges
- Cut chocolate sponges into three layers, and ice them [with the buttercream]
- Make chocolate decorations for our Halloween cake [the aforementioned sponge]
- Pipe all of our shortbread cookies with our Halloween designs
I managed to finish most of the stuff we had to get done. I didn't finish a few of the chocolate Halloween decorations, but I think we'll still have time to do them on Monday as well. All I have left is to do a mould of chocolate tombstones, pipe a freehand fence, and make a circular-ish shaped base of chocolate for the haunted house that I piped today. On Monday, we finish our Halloween cake, so I'll just have to get the chocolate stuff out of the way first.
Our entire group started with the buttercream first. German buttercream is actually delicious that an explanation won't even do it justice. It is essentially creamed butter and vanilla, whipped pastry cream, and melted semi-sweet chocolate. After mixing the butter and the pastry cream together, a small amount of that is added to the chocolate mixture and then this is added back into the buttercream mixture [also known as tempering]. It. Is. So. Delicious. After this, we cut our cakes into three hopefully even layers, which Jean-Luc inspected before we could go to the next step. He was checking for evenness of the layers and for flour clumps in the middle of the sponge (which I think would mean bad folding technique). After the go-ahead from Jean-Luc, we could ice our cakes. First we brushed each layer with a simple syrup, then added the buttercream. We did this for each layer and the top. Then we iced the sides, waiting for Jean-Luc to give us the okay, and put it back in the fridge. The finishing touches will be for Monday.
At this point, part of the group wanted to do their chocolate work, but I really wanted to pipe my shortbread cookie designs, because I knew that would take longer and not be ideal if rushed. I tried to jump on the chocolate bandwagon, but the chocolate that was melted was getting super lumpy and needed to be re-melted and re-tempered, so I gave up halfway through a cornet full of chocolate. One other group member also wanted to work on her cookies first, so we jumped ship and switched tasks. We had to make a bunch more royal icing and add colour to it to get the colours that we wanted; yesterday, we definitely didn't make enough, so today we were sure to make a lot. It was also easier to work on the piping with only two people sharing a bunch of different colours, as opposed to five. The icing for piping had to be thicker than the icing for glazing, because you didn't want all of your fine piping lines to run into each other, ruining your obviously awesome detail work. I spent some time yesterday coming up with designs, but some of them I just made up on the spot (like a hilarious ghost pastry chef wearing an apron, a hat, and oven mitts). My hands started shaking and cramping up a lot towards the end, so I sort of gave up... Jean-Luc is only marking the best four designs, so I think my weird splotchy spider web pumpkin will be saved from being assigned a grade.
 |
| Here is all of them in their glory. |
 |
| These are the nine best ones, in my opinion. You can't really tell from the picture, but in the first gravestone, there is a skeletal hand reaching up from the grass. I think the gravestones were my favourite shape to do. |
 |
| These are the nine not best ones. I sort of gave up on the skulls/Frankenstein. Mostly because I got tired of waiting for the right colours. I don't know if you can tell... |
I wish I had taken pictures of some of the other people's cookies... some of them were intensely amazing. Full on silhouettes of witches and black cats and haunted houses; a mummy; a giant spiderweb with spider... the talent of the people in my class really overwhelms me sometimes. The one tricky thing about working with royal icing is that it dries out super quickly, so it's really important to keep your containers covered even for the minute you're not using them. For a first attempt at piping icing onto cookies, I think I did a pretty good job.
Speaking of pretty good jobs... Jean-Luc met with each of us today to tell us about our progress to date in the course. One of the first things he said to me when I met with him (after he said, "The one thing we need to address is your attitude... I'm just kidding." Ha, ha) was, "I really don't have anything bad to say." Apparently, I am doing better in the class than I thought I was. He said that I was talented (!) and that my product was good, especially in the last little bit, and also that I really apply myself and other great things. He, not surprisingly, pointed out that one of the biggest things is that I doubt myself and that I have to try not to get frustrated if I can't do things right away or don't do them right. ("If you burn the sugar twice, I'm not going to give you a mark of 65. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone burns things. Even I burn things.") Fair enough. The only other thing he mentioned was speed, which is an okay problem to have, because we're all just learning. He said that one of the biggest issues that employers have with people who have done this program is speed. But he also said it was okay to be slower for now, but not to get frustrated if he is encouraging us to go a little faster. I am starting to get the feeling he wants me to tone down the frustration a little...? Well, I'll try.
After this and once we were done piping our cookies, I was pretty ready to be done for the day. But I along with one other person from our group still hadn't done my chocolate decorations yet and we technically were supposed to finish them today. After some intense internal conflict, we decided to just get as much as we could over with and that way we wouldn't be rushing through piping chocolate on Monday morning. I am glad that we got it out of the way today (even though we forgot about a few things and also didn't have time to do the moulds), because it will reduce the amount of chocolate work we'll have to do later. Working with chocolate is NOT my favourite. It is just so messy. And gets on EVERYTHING.
I will be glad once all of our Halloween stuff / testing is over. It has been a pretty intense week. I cannot believe it's already Friday again. It feels like I was just washing my uniform for the week (and now I have to do it again).
---
Today's Recipes
German Buttercream
500 g butter
750 g pastry cream
15 ml vanilla
250 g semi-sweet chocolate
Shortbread Cookies
100 g margarine
300 g butter
8 g salt
300 g sugar
15 ml vanilla
2 eggs
25 ml milk
750 g flour
Royal Icing*
500 g icing sugar
85 g egg whites
2 ml lemon juice
food colouring (various)
*Add water to thin it out
*Add icing sugar to thicken
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Testing, 1, 2, 3.
Today was our second day of evaluation, so we just went right into making stuff when we arrived in the morning.
First, we rolled out our shortbread dough and cut out at least four different shapes with the Halloween themed cookie cutters (I chose two different kinds of pumpkins, a skull and crossbones, an adorable looking ghost, a tombstone, and Frankenstein). Once they were baked and cooled, we had to make royal icing, colour it, and ice all of our cookies by the end of the day. Tomorrow, we will pipe the final designs onto them. So, that should be interesting, considering my history of piping. My homework today was figuring out what designs I will do on the shapes that I ended up using. I may or may not have "broken" a few cookies because my dough yielded a lot and I just couldn't bare to ice anymore... [they also tasted really good].
After the first task, our group sort of split up again because we were all at different stages of what we had completed. I chose to make my tea biscuits next. I managed to do a bunch of things wrong for these: over-mixed the dough, rolled it out too thin, used the wrong size cookie cutter, and didn't make the biscuits tall enough. In the end, they turned out pretty good though, and got the okay from Jean-Luc. So, there's that.
Once my tea biscuits were in the oven, I also put my chocolate chip cookies from yesterday in as well. I don't know why, but making chocolate chip cookies always makes me nervous. I think it has something to do with the fact that they seem so simple, but I always worry that they will be overdone or underdone. When I took them out of the oven, I didn't even think they were done (because they were just so soft!). But, they were. And they were also so chewy. I may have even left them in the oven for just a little bit too long. I also need to get a little better at making equally sized cookies. Because some of them were just so massive that they melted into the ones all around them. Whoops. (Most of the pictures from today were taken in a rush... we're on a deadline, people!)
After the cookies and the tea biscuits were done, I opted for making the pastry cream. I actually really like making pastry cream now because we've done it so many times in class and I've done it a few times at home, without Jean-Luc's supervision (and it was actually good). So, I wasn't too worried about it. The biggest thing was really just calculating the amounts for everything (instead of 1 litre of milk, we used 700 ml). I have gotten so much better at the method for the pastry cream, which is why it's nice to have something that you do kind of repetitively throughout the course of the year. (Except I probably would never say that about piping chocolate. Or piping anything.)
Technically, the pastry cream was an extra task for today, but we are making German buttercream tomorrow, which uses pastry cream, so it was probably good to get it out of the way. The chocolate sponge was also "extra" but we're icing them tomorrow (with the German buttercream), so I was determined to get that done today too.
But, before I could do that, our group made royal icing for the shortbread cookies and iced our cookies. This was a priority for today, because we're piping them tomorrow first thing. We did them at the same time because royal icing dries out really fast, so it's important to use it up pretty quickly (we experienced this later). Icing the cookies was surprisingly frustrating, mostly because we underestimated how much of each colour we would need, so the colours kept running out. Then the icing kept drying out. Then we had to make more icing. But by the time you had finished using one colour, or mixing one colour, someone else would have used up the next colour you were going to use... it was not ideal. As a result, I think my cookies could probably have been iced better (technique, colour choices, colour brightness), but... you can only do so much, right? I think at this point I also thought it was 12:15 (and Jean-Luc said that we had to start cleaning up at 12:30 again), but it was actually 11:15. So, once I found out my brain was an hour ahead of everything else, I calmed down a little bit.
And then it was off the decorating room to work with the modeling chocolate. We each had to make one chocolate rose and three leaves. I like working with the modeling chocolate, but I think I would do a lot better not on a deadline. I definitely rushed through the leaves because I just wanted to move on to the next thing and finish my sponge before the day was over. Some people really have a knack for the roses, but I just can't get mine to look as good as theirs, no matter how much time I have. They were all set up in rows with everyone's names by them, so it was hard not to look at everyone else's [and inevitably compare it to your own].
And, finally, I could work on my chocolate sponge. I was nervous for this one as well, because when I made the vanilla sponge in the pastry section, I had to start again because I didn't fold the flour in well at all. This time, I may not have heated my eggs up enough, because they didn't whip quite until they were stiff. They were still a bit runny even after they had been whipping for at least 10 minutes. Possibly longer. But, I put the flour/cocoa powder in anyway. Jean-Luc recommended that if you can, it's good to get someone to pass you the flour (they hold up a piece of parchment paper with the sifted flour on it and slowly pour it in) so that you can fold it well. For some reason, I find this process weirdly difficult. I'm not sure why that is. It's also especially important with a sponge cake not to over-fold, because the only reason that the cake rises at all is because of the air that has been incorporated into it from whipping the eggs and sugar. The more you handle it, the more volume you lose in the cake. It is probably this thought that contributes to my sponge-related anxiety. Another member of the group said that Jean-Luc can tell if a sponge has been over-folded because the batter will fill less than half of the pan, so I was obviously checking for this when I poured my batter. It definitely didn't make it to halfway. So, that wasn't great. But, when it was done, it actually looked fine. After it had cooled a little, I removed it from the pan, and then let it cool even more before I wrapped it and put it in the fridge for tomorrow.
At this point, almost everyone else in the class had already gone home, except the people who either hadn't finished icing their shortbread cookies or people who were staying late to do extra things. I was sort of a combination of the two, because after my sponge was done, I had to catch up on they day of chocolate that I had missed a couple weeks ago. (Or was that just last week?)
First, I melted 1.5 kg (!) of dark chocolate and then tempered it. A process which, although fun, gets chocolate on everything. After it was tempered, Jean-Luc showed me how to pour it into the moulds. Once they had set, I softened some mango caramel ganache (I don't think it was the one that I made, but I did make it earlier in the chocolate section) and placed it in a piping bag. This was piped into the chocolate moulds. Then, I had to re-melt and re-temper the chocolate (fun times) and do another layer of chocolate in the moulds on top of the ganache. The moulds then went in the fridge to cool down a little. After about 10ish minutes (or the amount of time it took me to clean up my workstation and those giant marble slabs we use for tempering), it was time to see if the chocolates were ready. When Jean-Luc was showing me how to take them out, he prefaced it with, "If you did a good job, they'll come out easily, just like this..." [and then he flipped it over and tapped the moulds with the back of a palette knife. And the chocolates just fell right out. He said that I did a good job, but he may have forgotten that this was the first mould, which he pretty much did while demonstrating. But, who's counting? The second chocolate mould wasn't quite ready yet, so it went in the blast freezer for a few minutes before I tried to take them out again. I made seashells, which turned out awesome, and hearts with little hearts on top of them. The more intricate patterns don't turn out as nice, because the moulds are harder to get perfectly clean, so they're not quite as shiny. [Note to self: stick with the seashells.] I have a weird thing about fruit and chocolate, so I didn't actually love the mango-caramel-chocolate BUT now I know how to do this sort of thing with maybe a dark chocolate with a milk chocolate ganache inside. Or some other delicious not-fruit flavour.
For some reason, I didn't think that catching up on a day of missed work would take that long, but I didn't leave class until 4 p.m. So, in the end, pretty long. Right now, the second year culinary students are working in the lab in the afternoons until 6 p.m., so Jean-Luc is at school basically from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. -- considering the current temperatures of the kitchen, that sounds awful. But, I think he likes our class better than the culinary students. Good.
Tomorrow, we each meet with Jean-Luc to find out our marks and where we stand in the course. I am a little nervous because it's pretty hard to tell how well you're doing in a program that's so practical. But I guess I'll see. I can sense that in general tomorrow is going to be a bit stressful because it's a lot of decorating and piping (first shortbread cookies, then decorating the cake with German buttercream, then chocolate Halloween decorations for the cake as well...). I just have to approach it with a positive attitude. And a lot of coffee.
---
Today's Recipes
Shortbread Cookies
100 g margarine
300 g butter
8 g salt
300 g sugar
15 ml vanilla
2 eggs
25 ml milk
750 g flour
Royal Icing
500 g icing sugar
85 g egg whites
2 ml lemon juice
Tea Biscuits
125 g pastry flour
375 g flour
50 g sugar
7 g salt
200 g butter
20 g baking powder
1 egg
280 ml milk
Chocolate Chip Cookies
183 g butter
150 g sugar
150 g brown sugar
2.6 g salt
10 ml vanilla
2 eggs
300 g flour
5 g baking powder
266 g chocolate chunks
Pastry Cream
700 ml milk
175 g sugar
7 egg yolk
63 g cornstarch
pinch of vanilla
Modeling Chocolate
335g dark chocolate couverture
100 g glucose
25 g sugar
25 g water
Chocolate Sponge
5 eggs
155 g sugar
pinch of vanilla
140 g pastry flour
15 g cocoa powder
Mango Caramel Ganache
100 g sugar
25 g glucose
200 g mango puree
pinch of ground ginger
250 milk chocolate
50 g butter
First, we rolled out our shortbread dough and cut out at least four different shapes with the Halloween themed cookie cutters (I chose two different kinds of pumpkins, a skull and crossbones, an adorable looking ghost, a tombstone, and Frankenstein). Once they were baked and cooled, we had to make royal icing, colour it, and ice all of our cookies by the end of the day. Tomorrow, we will pipe the final designs onto them. So, that should be interesting, considering my history of piping. My homework today was figuring out what designs I will do on the shapes that I ended up using. I may or may not have "broken" a few cookies because my dough yielded a lot and I just couldn't bare to ice anymore... [they also tasted really good].
After the first task, our group sort of split up again because we were all at different stages of what we had completed. I chose to make my tea biscuits next. I managed to do a bunch of things wrong for these: over-mixed the dough, rolled it out too thin, used the wrong size cookie cutter, and didn't make the biscuits tall enough. In the end, they turned out pretty good though, and got the okay from Jean-Luc. So, there's that.
 |
| I am definitely making these at home. |
Once my tea biscuits were in the oven, I also put my chocolate chip cookies from yesterday in as well. I don't know why, but making chocolate chip cookies always makes me nervous. I think it has something to do with the fact that they seem so simple, but I always worry that they will be overdone or underdone. When I took them out of the oven, I didn't even think they were done (because they were just so soft!). But, they were. And they were also so chewy. I may have even left them in the oven for just a little bit too long. I also need to get a little better at making equally sized cookies. Because some of them were just so massive that they melted into the ones all around them. Whoops. (Most of the pictures from today were taken in a rush... we're on a deadline, people!)
After the cookies and the tea biscuits were done, I opted for making the pastry cream. I actually really like making pastry cream now because we've done it so many times in class and I've done it a few times at home, without Jean-Luc's supervision (and it was actually good). So, I wasn't too worried about it. The biggest thing was really just calculating the amounts for everything (instead of 1 litre of milk, we used 700 ml). I have gotten so much better at the method for the pastry cream, which is why it's nice to have something that you do kind of repetitively throughout the course of the year. (Except I probably would never say that about piping chocolate. Or piping anything.)
Technically, the pastry cream was an extra task for today, but we are making German buttercream tomorrow, which uses pastry cream, so it was probably good to get it out of the way. The chocolate sponge was also "extra" but we're icing them tomorrow (with the German buttercream), so I was determined to get that done today too.
But, before I could do that, our group made royal icing for the shortbread cookies and iced our cookies. This was a priority for today, because we're piping them tomorrow first thing. We did them at the same time because royal icing dries out really fast, so it's important to use it up pretty quickly (we experienced this later). Icing the cookies was surprisingly frustrating, mostly because we underestimated how much of each colour we would need, so the colours kept running out. Then the icing kept drying out. Then we had to make more icing. But by the time you had finished using one colour, or mixing one colour, someone else would have used up the next colour you were going to use... it was not ideal. As a result, I think my cookies could probably have been iced better (technique, colour choices, colour brightness), but... you can only do so much, right? I think at this point I also thought it was 12:15 (and Jean-Luc said that we had to start cleaning up at 12:30 again), but it was actually 11:15. So, once I found out my brain was an hour ahead of everything else, I calmed down a little bit.
And then it was off the decorating room to work with the modeling chocolate. We each had to make one chocolate rose and three leaves. I like working with the modeling chocolate, but I think I would do a lot better not on a deadline. I definitely rushed through the leaves because I just wanted to move on to the next thing and finish my sponge before the day was over. Some people really have a knack for the roses, but I just can't get mine to look as good as theirs, no matter how much time I have. They were all set up in rows with everyone's names by them, so it was hard not to look at everyone else's [and inevitably compare it to your own].
And, finally, I could work on my chocolate sponge. I was nervous for this one as well, because when I made the vanilla sponge in the pastry section, I had to start again because I didn't fold the flour in well at all. This time, I may not have heated my eggs up enough, because they didn't whip quite until they were stiff. They were still a bit runny even after they had been whipping for at least 10 minutes. Possibly longer. But, I put the flour/cocoa powder in anyway. Jean-Luc recommended that if you can, it's good to get someone to pass you the flour (they hold up a piece of parchment paper with the sifted flour on it and slowly pour it in) so that you can fold it well. For some reason, I find this process weirdly difficult. I'm not sure why that is. It's also especially important with a sponge cake not to over-fold, because the only reason that the cake rises at all is because of the air that has been incorporated into it from whipping the eggs and sugar. The more you handle it, the more volume you lose in the cake. It is probably this thought that contributes to my sponge-related anxiety. Another member of the group said that Jean-Luc can tell if a sponge has been over-folded because the batter will fill less than half of the pan, so I was obviously checking for this when I poured my batter. It definitely didn't make it to halfway. So, that wasn't great. But, when it was done, it actually looked fine. After it had cooled a little, I removed it from the pan, and then let it cool even more before I wrapped it and put it in the fridge for tomorrow.
At this point, almost everyone else in the class had already gone home, except the people who either hadn't finished icing their shortbread cookies or people who were staying late to do extra things. I was sort of a combination of the two, because after my sponge was done, I had to catch up on they day of chocolate that I had missed a couple weeks ago. (Or was that just last week?)
First, I melted 1.5 kg (!) of dark chocolate and then tempered it. A process which, although fun, gets chocolate on everything. After it was tempered, Jean-Luc showed me how to pour it into the moulds. Once they had set, I softened some mango caramel ganache (I don't think it was the one that I made, but I did make it earlier in the chocolate section) and placed it in a piping bag. This was piped into the chocolate moulds. Then, I had to re-melt and re-temper the chocolate (fun times) and do another layer of chocolate in the moulds on top of the ganache. The moulds then went in the fridge to cool down a little. After about 10ish minutes (or the amount of time it took me to clean up my workstation and those giant marble slabs we use for tempering), it was time to see if the chocolates were ready. When Jean-Luc was showing me how to take them out, he prefaced it with, "If you did a good job, they'll come out easily, just like this..." [and then he flipped it over and tapped the moulds with the back of a palette knife. And the chocolates just fell right out. He said that I did a good job, but he may have forgotten that this was the first mould, which he pretty much did while demonstrating. But, who's counting? The second chocolate mould wasn't quite ready yet, so it went in the blast freezer for a few minutes before I tried to take them out again. I made seashells, which turned out awesome, and hearts with little hearts on top of them. The more intricate patterns don't turn out as nice, because the moulds are harder to get perfectly clean, so they're not quite as shiny. [Note to self: stick with the seashells.] I have a weird thing about fruit and chocolate, so I didn't actually love the mango-caramel-chocolate BUT now I know how to do this sort of thing with maybe a dark chocolate with a milk chocolate ganache inside. Or some other delicious not-fruit flavour.
Tomorrow, we each meet with Jean-Luc to find out our marks and where we stand in the course. I am a little nervous because it's pretty hard to tell how well you're doing in a program that's so practical. But I guess I'll see. I can sense that in general tomorrow is going to be a bit stressful because it's a lot of decorating and piping (first shortbread cookies, then decorating the cake with German buttercream, then chocolate Halloween decorations for the cake as well...). I just have to approach it with a positive attitude. And a lot of coffee.
---
Today's Recipes
Shortbread Cookies
100 g margarine
300 g butter
8 g salt
300 g sugar
15 ml vanilla
2 eggs
25 ml milk
750 g flour
Royal Icing
500 g icing sugar
85 g egg whites
2 ml lemon juice
Tea Biscuits
125 g pastry flour
375 g flour
50 g sugar
7 g salt
200 g butter
20 g baking powder
1 egg
280 ml milk
Chocolate Chip Cookies
183 g butter
150 g sugar
150 g brown sugar
2.6 g salt
10 ml vanilla
2 eggs
300 g flour
5 g baking powder
266 g chocolate chunks
Pastry Cream
700 ml milk
175 g sugar
7 egg yolk
63 g cornstarch
pinch of vanilla
Modeling Chocolate
335g dark chocolate couverture
100 g glucose
25 g sugar
25 g water
Chocolate Sponge
5 eggs
155 g sugar
pinch of vanilla
140 g pastry flour
15 g cocoa powder
Mango Caramel Ganache
100 g sugar
25 g glucose
200 g mango puree
pinch of ground ginger
250 milk chocolate
50 g butter
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Putting our skills to the test. Literally.
Today was our first official evaluation day, even though Jean-Luc has secretly been evaluating us this whole time... (cue anxiety). He gave us a list of tasks for today, Thursday, and Friday, plus things that could be accomplished in our "spare" time on any of the days.
Before we started, he showed us the chocolate decorations that he made for the Halloween cake that we were all going to make eventually. Using a combination of chocolate moulds and piping, he made trees, tombstones, bats, a haunted house, among other things. I don't love that the trees were piped without any sort of pattern in mind... freehand chocolate trees? Um.
The tasks for today were:
- Chocolate chip cookies (using 2 eggs, instead of 3)
- White rolls (using 500g of flour instead of 3kg)
- Dough for shortbread cookies
- 6 sugar cages
The optional tasks were:
- Chocolate sponge cake (for a Halloween cake)
- Chocolate decorations (for the same Halloween cake)
And, just for me:
- Zimt brotchen (aka the most delicious looking cinnamon buns in the world)
We could do the recipes in any order we wanted. We also had to calculate the adjustments... so much math for so early in the morning. While we worked, Jean-Luc walked around observing what everyone was doing and writing things down on an ominous yellow notepad. [The notepad wasn't actually ominous.] He also yelled things randomly throughout the morning (e.g. "Don't forget there are buns in the proofer and in the oven") and also sang the lyrics to What Does the Fox Say? repeatedly.
I started with my cinnamon buns to get the non-test-recipe out of the way. First I mixed the filling until it was properly blended and then rolled out the dough to a square the size of a rolling pin. Then, the filling went onto the dough, the edge was egg-washed, and the dough was sealed and sliced into 16 pieces. Then they went in the proofer for about 20 minutes until they had pretty much doubled in size. After that, they took between 15-20 minutes in the oven, and were turned around at 7 minutes. While they were baking, I prepped a glaze made of milk and corn syrup heated up, mixed with icing sugar, so that once the buns were done, I could glaze them immediately. They looked SO good.
Then, I moved onto the white rolls. We didn't use the mixer for these, because it was a significantly smaller batch than the ones we did in the bread section. [Side note: I didn't actually make these when I was in the bread section. Whoops.] So, we had the option to use a KitchenAid or to just mix the ingredients by hand and Jean-Luc recommended by hand, so obviously that's what we all did. The best part about mixing the dough by hand is that to get the gluten to form and build elasticity you literally have to SLAM the dough on the table repeatedly and it really helps get out any residual anger you have kicking around. I forgot that we had mixed dough by hand earlier in the year, so I'm glad that we revisited it. Once the dough was sufficiently beaten up, I set it aside to let it double in size (it probably took about an hour, but honestly, I sort of lost track of time).
Next, I made the chocolate chip cookies. We didn't have to bake them today, just set them on a baking tray, ready for the oven tomorrow. I want to make the same batter at home and then just freeze it and then just eat frozen chocolate chip cookie dough all the time, because it is actually that delicious. I think it has to do with creaming the butter/sugar/brown sugar at the beginning, because it is the smoothest, most delicious chocolate chip cookie batter in the entire world. Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but when I was waiting in line at the dishwasher, I may have been eating the leftover batter in the bowl.
Jean-Luc had said that we would start cleaning up at around 12:30, and at this point, it was around 11:50 and I still had to make my shortbread dough and my sugar cages, so I was starting to panic a little. I decided to make the shortbread dough first, because I knew the sugar cages would be tedious and/or frustrating. The shortbread dough was fairly straightforward to make (blend butter/sugar/salt, add eggs and vanilla, add flour slowly) and because it contains butter and margarine, it is super soft, which is why it can't really be used on the same day. The cookies will be baked and iced tomorrow.
I finished this at around 12:10 and I think Jean-Luc could sense my anxiety from across the room, because he said that it was okay if I didn't finish right at 12:30 and had to stay til 1:00... or 1:30... He wanted me to take the time to make good sugar cages. So, I hope I did him proud. The decoration syrup was already made, so we just had to heat it up, and then make a bunch of cages. We needed at least 6 good ones, and I think I may have made around 12 or 15 (and kept 9 for him to see). After we were done, we left them at the front for him to evaluate. I know I had at least two or three really awesome ones, but other than those, it's hard to say.
I was a little disappointed that I didn't get my chocolate sponge done today, but I do think that I'll have more time tomorrow, when I'm not trying to catch up on something from the day before. [Though, I do still have to catch up on one day of chocolate that I missed. But I think I'm doing that outside of class time.] I also resigned myself to not getting it done about halfway through the day, so at the end of the day when I hadn't, it wasn't really a surprise.
I like that we're not all doing the same thing and it's up to us to plan how we want to get everything that we have to get done. Tomorrow I'll have an even better idea of time budgeting, so I hope that I finish as early as some of the others did today. But, I'm okay with taking the time that I need. Doing things quickly hasn't been my forte so far, so I won't expect it to be now.
---
Today's Recipes
Zimt Brotchen
1 kg flour
550 ml cold milk
100 g sugar
15 ml honey
1 egg
2 yolks
60 g yeast
18 g salt
1/2 lemon zest
15 ml vanilla
Filling:
50 g butter
100 g sugar
100 g brown sugar
10 g flour
15 g cinnamon
Sugar Glaze 1
900 g icing sugar
200 ml milk
50 ml corn syrup
10 ml vanilla
White Rolls (makes about 12 rolls, 80g each)
500 g flour (original: 3 kg)
35 g yeast (210 g)
30 g sugar (180 g)
10 g salt (60 g)
1 egg (6)
300 ml milk (1800 ml)
Chocolate Chip Cookies (makes about 15 cookies)
183 g butter (original: 275 g)
150 g sugar (225 g)
150 g brown sugar (225 g)
2.6 g salt (4 g)
10 ml vanilla (15 ml)
2 eggs (3 eggs)
300 g flour (450 g)
5 g baking powder (8 g)
266 g chocolate chunks (400 g)
Shortbread Cookies
100 g margarine
300 g butter
8 g salt
300 g sugar
15 ml vanilla
2 eggs
25 ml milk
750 g flour
Before we started, he showed us the chocolate decorations that he made for the Halloween cake that we were all going to make eventually. Using a combination of chocolate moulds and piping, he made trees, tombstones, bats, a haunted house, among other things. I don't love that the trees were piped without any sort of pattern in mind... freehand chocolate trees? Um.
The tasks for today were:
- Chocolate chip cookies (using 2 eggs, instead of 3)
- White rolls (using 500g of flour instead of 3kg)
- Dough for shortbread cookies
- 6 sugar cages
The optional tasks were:
- Chocolate sponge cake (for a Halloween cake)
- Chocolate decorations (for the same Halloween cake)
And, just for me:
- Zimt brotchen (aka the most delicious looking cinnamon buns in the world)
We could do the recipes in any order we wanted. We also had to calculate the adjustments... so much math for so early in the morning. While we worked, Jean-Luc walked around observing what everyone was doing and writing things down on an ominous yellow notepad. [The notepad wasn't actually ominous.] He also yelled things randomly throughout the morning (e.g. "Don't forget there are buns in the proofer and in the oven") and also sang the lyrics to What Does the Fox Say? repeatedly.
I started with my cinnamon buns to get the non-test-recipe out of the way. First I mixed the filling until it was properly blended and then rolled out the dough to a square the size of a rolling pin. Then, the filling went onto the dough, the edge was egg-washed, and the dough was sealed and sliced into 16 pieces. Then they went in the proofer for about 20 minutes until they had pretty much doubled in size. After that, they took between 15-20 minutes in the oven, and were turned around at 7 minutes. While they were baking, I prepped a glaze made of milk and corn syrup heated up, mixed with icing sugar, so that once the buns were done, I could glaze them immediately. They looked SO good.
Then, I moved onto the white rolls. We didn't use the mixer for these, because it was a significantly smaller batch than the ones we did in the bread section. [Side note: I didn't actually make these when I was in the bread section. Whoops.] So, we had the option to use a KitchenAid or to just mix the ingredients by hand and Jean-Luc recommended by hand, so obviously that's what we all did. The best part about mixing the dough by hand is that to get the gluten to form and build elasticity you literally have to SLAM the dough on the table repeatedly and it really helps get out any residual anger you have kicking around. I forgot that we had mixed dough by hand earlier in the year, so I'm glad that we revisited it. Once the dough was sufficiently beaten up, I set it aside to let it double in size (it probably took about an hour, but honestly, I sort of lost track of time).
Next, I made the chocolate chip cookies. We didn't have to bake them today, just set them on a baking tray, ready for the oven tomorrow. I want to make the same batter at home and then just freeze it and then just eat frozen chocolate chip cookie dough all the time, because it is actually that delicious. I think it has to do with creaming the butter/sugar/brown sugar at the beginning, because it is the smoothest, most delicious chocolate chip cookie batter in the entire world. Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but when I was waiting in line at the dishwasher, I may have been eating the leftover batter in the bowl.
Jean-Luc had said that we would start cleaning up at around 12:30, and at this point, it was around 11:50 and I still had to make my shortbread dough and my sugar cages, so I was starting to panic a little. I decided to make the shortbread dough first, because I knew the sugar cages would be tedious and/or frustrating. The shortbread dough was fairly straightforward to make (blend butter/sugar/salt, add eggs and vanilla, add flour slowly) and because it contains butter and margarine, it is super soft, which is why it can't really be used on the same day. The cookies will be baked and iced tomorrow.
I finished this at around 12:10 and I think Jean-Luc could sense my anxiety from across the room, because he said that it was okay if I didn't finish right at 12:30 and had to stay til 1:00... or 1:30... He wanted me to take the time to make good sugar cages. So, I hope I did him proud. The decoration syrup was already made, so we just had to heat it up, and then make a bunch of cages. We needed at least 6 good ones, and I think I may have made around 12 or 15 (and kept 9 for him to see). After we were done, we left them at the front for him to evaluate. I know I had at least two or three really awesome ones, but other than those, it's hard to say.
I was a little disappointed that I didn't get my chocolate sponge done today, but I do think that I'll have more time tomorrow, when I'm not trying to catch up on something from the day before. [Though, I do still have to catch up on one day of chocolate that I missed. But I think I'm doing that outside of class time.] I also resigned myself to not getting it done about halfway through the day, so at the end of the day when I hadn't, it wasn't really a surprise.
I like that we're not all doing the same thing and it's up to us to plan how we want to get everything that we have to get done. Tomorrow I'll have an even better idea of time budgeting, so I hope that I finish as early as some of the others did today. But, I'm okay with taking the time that I need. Doing things quickly hasn't been my forte so far, so I won't expect it to be now.
---
Today's Recipes
Zimt Brotchen
1 kg flour
550 ml cold milk
100 g sugar
15 ml honey
1 egg
2 yolks
60 g yeast
18 g salt
1/2 lemon zest
15 ml vanilla
Filling:
50 g butter
100 g sugar
100 g brown sugar
10 g flour
15 g cinnamon
Sugar Glaze 1
900 g icing sugar
200 ml milk
50 ml corn syrup
10 ml vanilla
White Rolls (makes about 12 rolls, 80g each)
500 g flour (original: 3 kg)
35 g yeast (210 g)
30 g sugar (180 g)
10 g salt (60 g)
1 egg (6)
300 ml milk (1800 ml)
Chocolate Chip Cookies (makes about 15 cookies)
183 g butter (original: 275 g)
150 g sugar (225 g)
150 g brown sugar (225 g)
2.6 g salt (4 g)
10 ml vanilla (15 ml)
2 eggs (3 eggs)
300 g flour (450 g)
5 g baking powder (8 g)
266 g chocolate chunks (400 g)
Shortbread Cookies
100 g margarine
300 g butter
8 g salt
300 g sugar
15 ml vanilla
2 eggs
25 ml milk
750 g flour
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
"Queen of Bread"
Today was our last day in the bread section and I'm honestly a little
bit sad about it. I admit, I was totally scared of working with yeast
and thought that this section was going to be the worst and super
intense and scary. But, it was kind of awesome. While I was rolling out
and knotting little herb bread knots, Jean-Luc said, "Safia, you're
getting really good at this. You're like the queen of bread now." Maybe
against all odds and expectations, this is my
section. Also, when Jean-Luc jokingly said that our test was going to be
to make 120 rolls in 20 minutes, I was like, okay, no problem (before I
knew he was joking). Then he (also jokingly) said, and also 120 sugar
cages in 20 minutes (after which my face fell dramatically). Ha, ha.
The demonstration today was just how to colour chocolate, which I don't think warrants more than a couple of sentences. Don't use water-based colour. If using powder, use a fat-soluble, rather than a water-soluble one. And mix the colour with a small amount of chocolate first, before adding it in to the rest of the chocolate. It basically took as long to demonstrate as it did for me to type out that paragraph.
Then, I started with making a new batch of herb bread. I added my herb bread from last week to the bottom of the mixer, and added the new ingredients on top. In the new batch, I added 2g of mint instead of 2g of basil totally by accident and was too scared to tell Jean-Luc/anyone, so I was a little worried about how it would turn out. I may have even googled "mint in herb bread" to see if that was a thing... but in the end they turned out great, so nothing to worry about.
While that was rising, I made a double-batch of milk bread, which we made during the first week of classes. I think the knotting of this results in a really-cool looking loaf of bread, so I'm glad we did these ones again. The first time I was definitely too anxious to understand what was happening. I made four good-sized loaves and one tiny one (that I got to take home!).
Then, I made new dough for the zimt brotchen (we had to throw the one from last week out, unfortunately), which are German-style cinnamon buns. Yum. I am going to finish those off tomorrow, even though today was our last day in the bread section.
I was working totally separate from the rest of the group (again) today, so while I was doing my thing, they were making a variety of things we'd already made this section (white rolls, whole wheat rolls, cheddar/jalapeno cornbread, milk bread).
Once I was done the zimt brotchen dough, the herb bread had just about doubled in size and they were ready to be rolled out. I used the divider and then each piece of dough was rolled out into a long strip that was approximately the size of two hands side-by-side. Then these were formed into a single knot and placed on a baking tray with parchment paper. I felt like I had to do a million of them because it was just me knotting a double batch of herb bread, but part way through I think my muscle memory started taking over and I felt like I was getting the hang of knotting the bread. Once I had finished all five (!) trays, we went on our break. When we came back, they were ready to go in the proofer, and stayed in it until they were pretty soft to the touch. Then they were egg-washed and baked in the convection oven for about 10 minutes, til they were lightly browned on top. They looked really good. Even Jean-Luc said so. And they tasted yummy too (even with the mint...).
While those were baking, our group knotted our milk bread. 200g pieces of dough were rolled out into strips and then one is placed on top of the other (like a giant plus sign) and then they cross over left and right, up and down, until there is no more dough left, and then the edges are pressed together. We did this until we used up all of our strips of dough. I had one left, so I cut it in half and made a little loaf of milk bread, which was definitely my favourite one. Then we put them in the proofer for a bit, then they were egg-washed and put in the oven.
And, aside from the zimt brotchen that I'll finish off tomorrow, that signals the end of the bread section. I'm not sure what's on the docket for the rest of the week, though I do know we're making Halloween shortbread cookies at some point. With royal icing. Yum.
---
Today's Recipes
Herb Bread
1250 g flour
75 sugar
30 g salt
200 ml olive oil
700 ml water (32 degrees)
75 g yeast
2 g sage
2 g basil (or 2 g mint, by accident)
1 g thyme
+ 1 batch of previously made herb bread
Milk Bread (double batch)
500 flour
35 g fresh yeast
30 g sugar
10 g salt
1 egg
300 ml warm milk (30 degrees)
Zimt Brotchen
1 kg flour
550 ml cold milk
100 g sugar
15 ml honey
1 egg
2 egg yolks
60 g yeast
18 g salt
1/2 lemon zest
15 ml vanilla
150 g butter
The demonstration today was just how to colour chocolate, which I don't think warrants more than a couple of sentences. Don't use water-based colour. If using powder, use a fat-soluble, rather than a water-soluble one. And mix the colour with a small amount of chocolate first, before adding it in to the rest of the chocolate. It basically took as long to demonstrate as it did for me to type out that paragraph.
Then, I started with making a new batch of herb bread. I added my herb bread from last week to the bottom of the mixer, and added the new ingredients on top. In the new batch, I added 2g of mint instead of 2g of basil totally by accident and was too scared to tell Jean-Luc/anyone, so I was a little worried about how it would turn out. I may have even googled "mint in herb bread" to see if that was a thing... but in the end they turned out great, so nothing to worry about.
While that was rising, I made a double-batch of milk bread, which we made during the first week of classes. I think the knotting of this results in a really-cool looking loaf of bread, so I'm glad we did these ones again. The first time I was definitely too anxious to understand what was happening. I made four good-sized loaves and one tiny one (that I got to take home!).
Then, I made new dough for the zimt brotchen (we had to throw the one from last week out, unfortunately), which are German-style cinnamon buns. Yum. I am going to finish those off tomorrow, even though today was our last day in the bread section.
I was working totally separate from the rest of the group (again) today, so while I was doing my thing, they were making a variety of things we'd already made this section (white rolls, whole wheat rolls, cheddar/jalapeno cornbread, milk bread).
Once I was done the zimt brotchen dough, the herb bread had just about doubled in size and they were ready to be rolled out. I used the divider and then each piece of dough was rolled out into a long strip that was approximately the size of two hands side-by-side. Then these were formed into a single knot and placed on a baking tray with parchment paper. I felt like I had to do a million of them because it was just me knotting a double batch of herb bread, but part way through I think my muscle memory started taking over and I felt like I was getting the hang of knotting the bread. Once I had finished all five (!) trays, we went on our break. When we came back, they were ready to go in the proofer, and stayed in it until they were pretty soft to the touch. Then they were egg-washed and baked in the convection oven for about 10 minutes, til they were lightly browned on top. They looked really good. Even Jean-Luc said so. And they tasted yummy too (even with the mint...).
While those were baking, our group knotted our milk bread. 200g pieces of dough were rolled out into strips and then one is placed on top of the other (like a giant plus sign) and then they cross over left and right, up and down, until there is no more dough left, and then the edges are pressed together. We did this until we used up all of our strips of dough. I had one left, so I cut it in half and made a little loaf of milk bread, which was definitely my favourite one. Then we put them in the proofer for a bit, then they were egg-washed and put in the oven.
And, aside from the zimt brotchen that I'll finish off tomorrow, that signals the end of the bread section. I'm not sure what's on the docket for the rest of the week, though I do know we're making Halloween shortbread cookies at some point. With royal icing. Yum.
---
Today's Recipes
Herb Bread
1250 g flour
75 sugar
30 g salt
200 ml olive oil
700 ml water (32 degrees)
75 g yeast
2 g sage
2 g basil (or 2 g mint, by accident)
1 g thyme
+ 1 batch of previously made herb bread
Milk Bread (double batch)
500 flour
35 g fresh yeast
30 g sugar
10 g salt
1 egg
300 ml warm milk (30 degrees)
Zimt Brotchen
1 kg flour
550 ml cold milk
100 g sugar
15 ml honey
1 egg
2 egg yolks
60 g yeast
18 g salt
1/2 lemon zest
15 ml vanilla
150 g butter
Friday, October 18, 2013
And now for some savoury things.
In a completely surprising turn of events, I totally love the bread section. Not that it's surprising that I love bread. That is obvious. I was just really scared of cooking with yeast and the idea of bread in general, but it has been really fun. Our last day of this section will be next Tuesday.
Before we got started, Jean-Luc demonstrated how to make royal icing and iced some of the shortbread cookies he made from the dough we saw yesterday. He also piped an intricate spiderweb on one of them and an adorable ghost saying, "Boo!" on the other. I am excited to choose my own Halloween designs. Also, shortbread cookies with royal icing? Yum. I almost ate the ones that he had sitting at the front of the room, while he was still demonstrating. I wonder what happened to them...
Today we made:
- Almond cream brioche
- Cheddar/jalapeno cornbread rolls
- Kaiser rolls
I was sort of confused about what "brioche" actually is, so then the Internet told me. Essentially, it's made like a bread dough, but it's more pastry-like because of the high butter and egg content. So, while it is made like bread, it has more golden, flaky, and delicious texture. Oh, god, is it delicious. The brioche we made today were similar to the ones yesterday, except after cutting the rolls, we cut them in half again but not all the way to the end, and then twisted one half onto the other half, making sort of a figure eight. These were filled with a "tant pour tant", which is equal parts almonds and sugar, and pastry cream all mixed together and then spread onto the dough. This obviously happened before we rolled and sliced it. We let them sit for a while before we put them into the oven, but honestly, it's hard to keep track of how long we do everything for.
The cheddar and jalapeno ("Southwestern") cornbread was awesome. It was fun because we used a lot of spices that we haven't used for anything yet (cumin, garlic powder, and paprika). The batter sort of reminded me of making pakoras. The method was a "sponge method", not to be confused with the sponge method that we used for our sponge cake... because it's totally different. Basically, we mixed some of our ingredients together, and let it sit so the yeast could do it's thing. Once that was done, we put this mixture into our giant mixing bowl and added the rest of the ingredients and mixed it on low until it was blended. Then, we mixed it on high for about a minute. We didn't want to mix it much longer than this, because since we were rolling it out right away, if we mixed it for too long, it would be too soft to work with. After it was rolled out to the length and width of our rolling pins, it was time to add the filling. For the jalapenos, Jean-Luc told us to remove the seeds and then chop them finely. To which I responded, "Did you say remove the seeds?" He said, "Yeah, otherwise they'll be a little too spicy. But... you can leave them in if you want. Just tell them when you take them out to the cafeteria." He then proceeded to tell us about how he couldn't really handle spicy food, and that's when I ate half a jalapeno, seeds and everything. In the end, though, my rolls weren't even that spicy (even according to Jean-Luc, not just me). The cornbread really neutralized the spice. I probably could have added double. (Some people didn't even add any. Come on!) I think if I made something like this again I would add more of all of the spices, just to give it a bit more of a kick. But they were really delicious. Especially right out of the oven. There was no way I wasn't sampling every single thing we made today.
The order in which we did things today was totally a blur because we are just constantly mixing things, taking them out, putting them into containers, storing them, letting them rise, covering them, uncovering them, and so on... so, at some point, we made kaiser rolls. Before we could make the final dough, we had to make something called a pre-dough that had to sit for an hour before adding it to the final dough. The pre-dough had the yeast in it. After we'd made it and let it sit, we added the rest of the ingredients to it and mixed everything together. After this was done, we set it aside again. Then, we cut the dough in half, and used the divider to divide and separate it and made little balls with two pieces of the separated dough. Apparently, I am good at rolling the dough. That could be why I like this section so much. Which is probably good because after I finished rolling all of the first half of the dough, I had to do my second half too. Everyone else worked with partners, but I guess that's what happens when you have a group of 5. After the dough was rolled, we used a kaiser roll stamp to create a pattern in the top of the rolls. None of us really pressed hard enough, because the design was more of a faint remnant of a design than anything once they were baked. But, next time. These would be hard to make at home, because when they were in the deck oven, we injected them with steam for a few seconds. Jean-Luc said that when he makes these at home, he uses two pizza stones and sprays the pizza stones with water before putting the rolls in the oven, but it doesn't work as well as having an oven that has a steam function. Oh well. Cooking them with steam helps them puff up and be really soft on the inside but with a harder crust. I have to say, eating these warm out of the oven was amazing. AMAZING. I covertly gave away a lot of baked goods today. There were just so many of everything. And warm bread is just the best.
The actual best part of the day was when I got to take the second half of my brioche dough home, since it's Friday and it won't stay good over the weekend. And, even though I do now have a fully stocked pantry and lots of baking equipment, I do not have an industrial bread mixer, so having dough that's already made definitely lends itself to being turned into delicious dessert. I also bought a kitchen scale last night so that I wouldn't have to worry about trying to figure out conversions for each ingredient in a recipe from grams to cups. I think I may finally be ready to bake some of the things I've learned in class at home. My kitchen table is covered in unopened ingredients and equipment.
---
Today's Recipes
Brioche
1 kg flour
500 g bread flour
250 g sugar
30 g salt
100 g yeast
12 eggs
200 ml water
375 g butter
375 g margarine
Almond Cream
500 g ground almonds
500 g sugar
500 g pastry cream
Southwestern Cornbread
100 ml water
320 ml buttermilk
50 g yeast
2 eggs
110 g sugar
200 g flour
4 g paprika
4 g cumin
6 g garlic powder
Later, add
14 g salt
80 ml olive oil
100 ml milk (28 degrees)
600 g flour
Kaiser Rolls
Pre-dough
15 g yeast
5 g sugar
480 ml water (32 degrees)
800 g bread flour
Final Dough
1 L water (32 degrees, 45 if using cold pre-dough)
55 g yeast
45 g salt
100 g honey
85 g butter
1.5 kg bread flour
Pre-dough
Before we got started, Jean-Luc demonstrated how to make royal icing and iced some of the shortbread cookies he made from the dough we saw yesterday. He also piped an intricate spiderweb on one of them and an adorable ghost saying, "Boo!" on the other. I am excited to choose my own Halloween designs. Also, shortbread cookies with royal icing? Yum. I almost ate the ones that he had sitting at the front of the room, while he was still demonstrating. I wonder what happened to them...
Today we made:
- Almond cream brioche
- Cheddar/jalapeno cornbread rolls
- Kaiser rolls
I was sort of confused about what "brioche" actually is, so then the Internet told me. Essentially, it's made like a bread dough, but it's more pastry-like because of the high butter and egg content. So, while it is made like bread, it has more golden, flaky, and delicious texture. Oh, god, is it delicious. The brioche we made today were similar to the ones yesterday, except after cutting the rolls, we cut them in half again but not all the way to the end, and then twisted one half onto the other half, making sort of a figure eight. These were filled with a "tant pour tant", which is equal parts almonds and sugar, and pastry cream all mixed together and then spread onto the dough. This obviously happened before we rolled and sliced it. We let them sit for a while before we put them into the oven, but honestly, it's hard to keep track of how long we do everything for.
The cheddar and jalapeno ("Southwestern") cornbread was awesome. It was fun because we used a lot of spices that we haven't used for anything yet (cumin, garlic powder, and paprika). The batter sort of reminded me of making pakoras. The method was a "sponge method", not to be confused with the sponge method that we used for our sponge cake... because it's totally different. Basically, we mixed some of our ingredients together, and let it sit so the yeast could do it's thing. Once that was done, we put this mixture into our giant mixing bowl and added the rest of the ingredients and mixed it on low until it was blended. Then, we mixed it on high for about a minute. We didn't want to mix it much longer than this, because since we were rolling it out right away, if we mixed it for too long, it would be too soft to work with. After it was rolled out to the length and width of our rolling pins, it was time to add the filling. For the jalapenos, Jean-Luc told us to remove the seeds and then chop them finely. To which I responded, "Did you say remove the seeds?" He said, "Yeah, otherwise they'll be a little too spicy. But... you can leave them in if you want. Just tell them when you take them out to the cafeteria." He then proceeded to tell us about how he couldn't really handle spicy food, and that's when I ate half a jalapeno, seeds and everything. In the end, though, my rolls weren't even that spicy (even according to Jean-Luc, not just me). The cornbread really neutralized the spice. I probably could have added double. (Some people didn't even add any. Come on!) I think if I made something like this again I would add more of all of the spices, just to give it a bit more of a kick. But they were really delicious. Especially right out of the oven. There was no way I wasn't sampling every single thing we made today.
The order in which we did things today was totally a blur because we are just constantly mixing things, taking them out, putting them into containers, storing them, letting them rise, covering them, uncovering them, and so on... so, at some point, we made kaiser rolls. Before we could make the final dough, we had to make something called a pre-dough that had to sit for an hour before adding it to the final dough. The pre-dough had the yeast in it. After we'd made it and let it sit, we added the rest of the ingredients to it and mixed everything together. After this was done, we set it aside again. Then, we cut the dough in half, and used the divider to divide and separate it and made little balls with two pieces of the separated dough. Apparently, I am good at rolling the dough. That could be why I like this section so much. Which is probably good because after I finished rolling all of the first half of the dough, I had to do my second half too. Everyone else worked with partners, but I guess that's what happens when you have a group of 5. After the dough was rolled, we used a kaiser roll stamp to create a pattern in the top of the rolls. None of us really pressed hard enough, because the design was more of a faint remnant of a design than anything once they were baked. But, next time. These would be hard to make at home, because when they were in the deck oven, we injected them with steam for a few seconds. Jean-Luc said that when he makes these at home, he uses two pizza stones and sprays the pizza stones with water before putting the rolls in the oven, but it doesn't work as well as having an oven that has a steam function. Oh well. Cooking them with steam helps them puff up and be really soft on the inside but with a harder crust. I have to say, eating these warm out of the oven was amazing. AMAZING. I covertly gave away a lot of baked goods today. There were just so many of everything. And warm bread is just the best.
The actual best part of the day was when I got to take the second half of my brioche dough home, since it's Friday and it won't stay good over the weekend. And, even though I do now have a fully stocked pantry and lots of baking equipment, I do not have an industrial bread mixer, so having dough that's already made definitely lends itself to being turned into delicious dessert. I also bought a kitchen scale last night so that I wouldn't have to worry about trying to figure out conversions for each ingredient in a recipe from grams to cups. I think I may finally be ready to bake some of the things I've learned in class at home. My kitchen table is covered in unopened ingredients and equipment.
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Today's Recipes
Brioche
1 kg flour
500 g bread flour
250 g sugar
30 g salt
100 g yeast
12 eggs
200 ml water
375 g butter
375 g margarine
Almond Cream
500 g ground almonds
500 g sugar
500 g pastry cream
Southwestern Cornbread
100 ml water
320 ml buttermilk
50 g yeast
2 eggs
110 g sugar
200 g flour
4 g paprika
4 g cumin
6 g garlic powder
Later, add
14 g salt
80 ml olive oil
100 ml milk (28 degrees)
600 g flour
Kaiser Rolls
Pre-dough
15 g yeast
5 g sugar
480 ml water (32 degrees)
800 g bread flour
Final Dough
1 L water (32 degrees, 45 if using cold pre-dough)
55 g yeast
45 g salt
100 g honey
85 g butter
1.5 kg bread flour
Pre-dough
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Dos and Doughnts.
After a few days away from the kitchen, I returned to Day 2 of the bread section. I worked pretty much by myself today in order to catch up to what everyone else was doing. I haven't completely caught up, but man, does the bread group make a lot of stuff. I actually found it kind of therapeutic, especially when we had to make clover rolls, which consisted of a lot of dough rolling and shaping.
First, Jean-Luc demonstrated a basic shortbread, which he is going to roll out tomorrow to make some Halloween cookies. Later in the month, we're all going to have to choose five designs and make a bunch of Halloween cookies ourselves. He wanted to show us now so we could start to think about what shapes/designs we are going to use and start practicing drawing/piping them.
Then, I made the dough for:
- Whole wheat/"clover" rolls
- Zimt brotchen - which I think are just German cinnamon buns
- Herb bread (with basil, sage, and thyme)
- And, brioche
The only thing I started and finished today were the whole wheat rolls. After it doubled in size (yeast is so cool), I split it in half and used this really cool machine that cuts the dough into separate little pieces, the perfect size for rolls. Then, I rounded out all of these little pieces, and did it again with the other half of the dough. After this, each ball gets split in half (you pretend your hand is a knife!) and then three of the smaller pieces get attached to each other (like a clover) and placed in a greased muffin tin. As I'm typing this now, I'm realizing that it's sort of weird that we do three leaf clovers... is eating them bad luck? After these were all done (it took a long time, but I found it sort of relaxing), I put them on a baking rack to let them rise a little bit more. Then they went in the proofer for about 10 minutes until they were basically exploding out of the muffin pans. I egg-washed them before they went into the oven, where they expanded even more in the 10 minutes they were in there and they looked really good. They got sent to the cafeteria right away... fresh-from-the-oven rolls. Yum.
Two of the people in our group weren't here today and Jean-Luc didn't want to store the brioche dough they made yesterday for another day, so I finished theirs off (and made a batch of my own later). We rolled out the dough to the length and width of our rolling pins -- I'm still working on getting my dough to be completely square -- and spread a thin layer of pastry cream and sprinkled raisins all over the dough. Then, we rolled it up and cut it into 16 "equal" pieces (because my dough wasn't square at all, I had a lot of really awkward end pieces). We set them aside to rise for a bit before putting them in the proofer and kept them in there for about 10 minutes before putting them in the oven. I think while these were cooking, I was making something entirely different, so I'm not even sure exactly how long they were in the oven. After they came out, we brushed them with a flat icing glaze, which is just icing sugar and water. I am probably going to want to eat eight of everything we make in this section. Good thing we're only supposed to have one.
I ate my brioche in the car on the way home from class and I just wanted it to last forever. Making bread is a lot less labour intensive when you have a giant industrial bread mixer (though they can be a little intimidating to use at first). What do you do if you don't have one of those?
---
Today's Recipes
Whole Wheat Rolls
1.5 kg bread flour
700 g whole wheat flour
44 g salt
130 g yeast
110 g butter
88 g sugar
1400 ml milk (28 degrees)
Zimt Brotchen
1 kg flour
550 ml cold milk
100 g sugar
15 ml honey
1 egg
2 egg yolks
60 g yeast
18 g salt
1/2 lemon zest
15 ml vanilla
150 g butter
Herb Bread
1250 g flour
75 sugar
30 g salt
200 ml olive oil
700 ml water (32 degrees)
75 g yeast
2 g sage
2 g basil
1 g thyme
Brioche
1 kg flour
500 g bread flour
250 g sugar
30 g salt
100 g yeast
12 eggs
200 ml cold water
375 g butter
375 g margarine
Flat Icing
icing sugar
water
First, Jean-Luc demonstrated a basic shortbread, which he is going to roll out tomorrow to make some Halloween cookies. Later in the month, we're all going to have to choose five designs and make a bunch of Halloween cookies ourselves. He wanted to show us now so we could start to think about what shapes/designs we are going to use and start practicing drawing/piping them.
Then, I made the dough for:
- Whole wheat/"clover" rolls
- Zimt brotchen - which I think are just German cinnamon buns
- Herb bread (with basil, sage, and thyme)
- And, brioche
The only thing I started and finished today were the whole wheat rolls. After it doubled in size (yeast is so cool), I split it in half and used this really cool machine that cuts the dough into separate little pieces, the perfect size for rolls. Then, I rounded out all of these little pieces, and did it again with the other half of the dough. After this, each ball gets split in half (you pretend your hand is a knife!) and then three of the smaller pieces get attached to each other (like a clover) and placed in a greased muffin tin. As I'm typing this now, I'm realizing that it's sort of weird that we do three leaf clovers... is eating them bad luck? After these were all done (it took a long time, but I found it sort of relaxing), I put them on a baking rack to let them rise a little bit more. Then they went in the proofer for about 10 minutes until they were basically exploding out of the muffin pans. I egg-washed them before they went into the oven, where they expanded even more in the 10 minutes they were in there and they looked really good. They got sent to the cafeteria right away... fresh-from-the-oven rolls. Yum.
Two of the people in our group weren't here today and Jean-Luc didn't want to store the brioche dough they made yesterday for another day, so I finished theirs off (and made a batch of my own later). We rolled out the dough to the length and width of our rolling pins -- I'm still working on getting my dough to be completely square -- and spread a thin layer of pastry cream and sprinkled raisins all over the dough. Then, we rolled it up and cut it into 16 "equal" pieces (because my dough wasn't square at all, I had a lot of really awkward end pieces). We set them aside to rise for a bit before putting them in the proofer and kept them in there for about 10 minutes before putting them in the oven. I think while these were cooking, I was making something entirely different, so I'm not even sure exactly how long they were in the oven. After they came out, we brushed them with a flat icing glaze, which is just icing sugar and water. I am probably going to want to eat eight of everything we make in this section. Good thing we're only supposed to have one.
I ate my brioche in the car on the way home from class and I just wanted it to last forever. Making bread is a lot less labour intensive when you have a giant industrial bread mixer (though they can be a little intimidating to use at first). What do you do if you don't have one of those?
---
Whole Wheat Rolls
1.5 kg bread flour
700 g whole wheat flour
44 g salt
130 g yeast
110 g butter
88 g sugar
1400 ml milk (28 degrees)
Zimt Brotchen
1 kg flour
550 ml cold milk
100 g sugar
15 ml honey
1 egg
2 egg yolks
60 g yeast
18 g salt
1/2 lemon zest
15 ml vanilla
150 g butter
Herb Bread
1250 g flour
75 sugar
30 g salt
200 ml olive oil
700 ml water (32 degrees)
75 g yeast
2 g sage
2 g basil
1 g thyme
Brioche
1 kg flour
500 g bread flour
250 g sugar
30 g salt
100 g yeast
12 eggs
200 ml cold water
375 g butter
375 g margarine
Flat Icing
icing sugar
water
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Holiday Baking
I missed two days of class this week, but I wanted to prove that I wasn't totally slacking off while I was away.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Stopping to smell the [chocolate] roses.
Today was my last day in the decoration group even though technically it
won't end til Tuesday. I'm missing class on Tuesday and Wednesday
though, so catching up on one missed day of decoration and one missed
day of the bread section is going to be fun. (But probably not.)
This section has been generally pretty "easy" because even though things have been pretty hard to do, we haven't had to do them particularly fast and it was okay if we messed them up too. It takes a lot of the pressure off. Also, we are in a completely separate room ("The Decoration Room") than everyone else, so it just seems calmer.
Jean-Luc finished off the pumpkin and chocolate cake today and it looked awesome. I wanted to take a picture, but it disappeared before I could. He added a glaze and pieces of chocolate coloured with cocoa butter and decorative chocolate swirls and isomalt circles. It looked awesome. And would probably taste really good too.
Then we went back to the decoration room and started softening up our modeling chocolate that, despite being out of the fridge overnight, was still really hard. After the chocolate was a workable consistency, Jean-Luc showed us how to make chocolate roses. First, we rolled out our chocolate with plastic rolling pins. Then we cut out ten little circles and flattened them out a little bit more, and then made the top half even thinner than the bottom half. Then we made a sort of cone shape out of a ball of chocolate.
A little bit up from the base, we pushed the chocolate so it went in and then out again at the base all the way around. The part above the indent was approximately the same size as our circles. These would be the petals. We pressed one petal onto the cone, making sure to push in at the base and to ensure it was covering the tip of the cone. The other petal went on the other side. Then we did a layer of three, pinching the petals slightly so they looked more realistic. Then we did a layer of five. If you wanted to, you could do 2-3-5-7-and keep going. We only did ten petals in total. Then, we cut the base off of the flower so all we had left was an awesome chocolate rose, without the weirdly shaped base. It was pretty cool. I think I thinned out my petals a little too much, because the tops of them started to dry and crack. But, overall, it was pretty fun. It felt like we were back in elementary school making things out of clay.
After we had each made at least three good flowers, we rolled out more chocolate and cut out leaves (freehand...awesome). Then we arranged two of our best flowers and three leaves on each of our pastry chefs from yesterday. Voila. (We've been filling plates like this with chocolates that we and other groups have made and then sending them to the cafeteria. The truffles sell for 75 cents each.)
Even though the roses only took us til about 10:30ish we were all sort of ready to go home for the day... but we weren't quite done yet. After a break, we came back and made a mango caramel ganache. (I didn't actually love the taste of this, but I also don't really like warm mango. So that could be why.)
The ganache had a bunch of different steps and the timing was pretty important, so you had to make sure that your mango puree was warm before you started to caramelize your sugar, and you also wanted your chocolate to be melted so that you could pour the rest of the mixture into the already-melted chocolate, rather than having to wait. First, we heated up our (frozen) mango puree, with a pinch of ginger added to it. Then we heated up glucose and sugar in a pot to caramelize it. Once the sugar was caramelized, we "deglazed" it by adding the hot mango mixture to the caramel mixture. (I don't really understand what "deglazing" is, but I'll have to research that this weekend.) We mixed the mango and sugar until smooth, and then were supposed to pass it through a chinois to get rid of any sugar lumps, but there was a bit of a miscommunication over when to pass the mixture through the chinois, so we all did it at different times or not at all (like me). After the mango and sugar was free of lumps (or just naturally smooth, like mine...), we added it into the chocolate and mixed it all together until blended. Then we added our butter and mixed it into the warm chocolate. It wasn't that hard to do, but managing your three pots at the same time gets a little difficult when there are also a bunch of other people using the stoves and then you spill just-boiled mango puree on your hands. That'll leave a scar. I'm not sure what we're going to do with it (e.g. whether we're filling chocolates with it or making chocolates out of it) but we'll find out next week. To be continued.
After that, we were done for the day and we got to clean up and leave SUPER early, which is always nice. The decorating section is kind of the opposite of the restaurant section in that in one you finish unexpectedly early and in the other one you have to stay surprisingly late. Next week we'll be onto the next section, our fifth of the five-week rotation: bread.
---
Today's Recipes
Modeling Chocolate
335 g dark couverture chocolate
100 g glucose
25 g sugar
25 g water
Mango Caramel Ganache
100 g sugar
25 g glucose
200 g mango puree
1 g ground ginger
250 g milk chocolate
50 g butter
This section has been generally pretty "easy" because even though things have been pretty hard to do, we haven't had to do them particularly fast and it was okay if we messed them up too. It takes a lot of the pressure off. Also, we are in a completely separate room ("The Decoration Room") than everyone else, so it just seems calmer.
Jean-Luc finished off the pumpkin and chocolate cake today and it looked awesome. I wanted to take a picture, but it disappeared before I could. He added a glaze and pieces of chocolate coloured with cocoa butter and decorative chocolate swirls and isomalt circles. It looked awesome. And would probably taste really good too.
Then we went back to the decoration room and started softening up our modeling chocolate that, despite being out of the fridge overnight, was still really hard. After the chocolate was a workable consistency, Jean-Luc showed us how to make chocolate roses. First, we rolled out our chocolate with plastic rolling pins. Then we cut out ten little circles and flattened them out a little bit more, and then made the top half even thinner than the bottom half. Then we made a sort of cone shape out of a ball of chocolate.
A little bit up from the base, we pushed the chocolate so it went in and then out again at the base all the way around. The part above the indent was approximately the same size as our circles. These would be the petals. We pressed one petal onto the cone, making sure to push in at the base and to ensure it was covering the tip of the cone. The other petal went on the other side. Then we did a layer of three, pinching the petals slightly so they looked more realistic. Then we did a layer of five. If you wanted to, you could do 2-3-5-7-and keep going. We only did ten petals in total. Then, we cut the base off of the flower so all we had left was an awesome chocolate rose, without the weirdly shaped base. It was pretty cool. I think I thinned out my petals a little too much, because the tops of them started to dry and crack. But, overall, it was pretty fun. It felt like we were back in elementary school making things out of clay.
After we had each made at least three good flowers, we rolled out more chocolate and cut out leaves (freehand...awesome). Then we arranged two of our best flowers and three leaves on each of our pastry chefs from yesterday. Voila. (We've been filling plates like this with chocolates that we and other groups have made and then sending them to the cafeteria. The truffles sell for 75 cents each.)
Even though the roses only took us til about 10:30ish we were all sort of ready to go home for the day... but we weren't quite done yet. After a break, we came back and made a mango caramel ganache. (I didn't actually love the taste of this, but I also don't really like warm mango. So that could be why.)
The ganache had a bunch of different steps and the timing was pretty important, so you had to make sure that your mango puree was warm before you started to caramelize your sugar, and you also wanted your chocolate to be melted so that you could pour the rest of the mixture into the already-melted chocolate, rather than having to wait. First, we heated up our (frozen) mango puree, with a pinch of ginger added to it. Then we heated up glucose and sugar in a pot to caramelize it. Once the sugar was caramelized, we "deglazed" it by adding the hot mango mixture to the caramel mixture. (I don't really understand what "deglazing" is, but I'll have to research that this weekend.) We mixed the mango and sugar until smooth, and then were supposed to pass it through a chinois to get rid of any sugar lumps, but there was a bit of a miscommunication over when to pass the mixture through the chinois, so we all did it at different times or not at all (like me). After the mango and sugar was free of lumps (or just naturally smooth, like mine...), we added it into the chocolate and mixed it all together until blended. Then we added our butter and mixed it into the warm chocolate. It wasn't that hard to do, but managing your three pots at the same time gets a little difficult when there are also a bunch of other people using the stoves and then you spill just-boiled mango puree on your hands. That'll leave a scar. I'm not sure what we're going to do with it (e.g. whether we're filling chocolates with it or making chocolates out of it) but we'll find out next week. To be continued.
After that, we were done for the day and we got to clean up and leave SUPER early, which is always nice. The decorating section is kind of the opposite of the restaurant section in that in one you finish unexpectedly early and in the other one you have to stay surprisingly late. Next week we'll be onto the next section, our fifth of the five-week rotation: bread.
---
Today's Recipes
Modeling Chocolate
335 g dark couverture chocolate
100 g glucose
25 g sugar
25 g water
Mango Caramel Ganache
100 g sugar
25 g glucose
200 g mango puree
1 g ground ginger
250 g milk chocolate
50 g butter
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