The demonstration today was for a genoise, which is similar to a sponge cake. The only difference is that a genoise has butter and a sponge doesn't, so the genoise is a bit denser and heavier than the sponge. I don't know what section we'll be making those in, but watching Jean-Luc's demonstrations makes me feel like I'm watching a cooking show live. Sometimes he even does that thing where he says "and then you have to do this... I did these ones earlier" and he pulls out a batch of finished whatever-he's-making. Just like on TV!
[Speaking of sponges... we had to take our vanilla sponges out of the freezer to take them out of the cake rings they were in so another group could use them, and someone slid a baking tray right on top of my sponge cakes, so the tops got stuck to the tray when they were removed from the baking rack. Sad moment. Jean-Luc said that we would fix it. Not the best start to the day. It also doesn't help with my desire for everything to be perfect all the time.]
We pretty much spent all day today making only one dessert, pear tarts for the restaurant. We started with making a batch of sweet dough, which I think I am getting better at. I may have only added half of the required flour initially. Jean-Luc asked, "Why is yours so runny? Do you have enough flour in there?" To which I responded, "Yes, I think so. No, wait... shit. Only half." This is what happens when I try to do things too quickly. After the sweet dough was blended, we put it in the fridge to cool. Then we made a poaching syrup, which is essentially a light syrup, but with some other spices added for flavour. We used cinnamon, vanilla, and star anise. But you can pretty much add anything you want to it. Once this was brought to a boil, we turned the heat down to low, and added some peeled and halved pears. While those were cooking, we made a bourdaloue cream, which is a different kind of almond cream. It is similar to frangipane, but it also has whipped cream in it, which makes it a little bit lighter and creamier. I think I prefer this one, because whipped cream makes everything better. We set that aside and then took out our now chilled sweet dough and rolled it out and set it into little tart rings and put them in the fridge to harden a little. I like making a bunch of small things instead of one big thing; messing up on one small thing has fewer consequences than ruining a whole cake/pie/tart. At some point, we went on a break. When we came back, we took our poached pears, strained them, and put them in the blast freezer for a few minutes to cool them down. We took out our tarts and piped some of the bourdaloue into each one, filling it to about halfway. Then we cored and sliced our pears and arranged them on top. Then into the oven they went.
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| Not the best picture, but you get the idea. |
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| If I liked cooked fruit and/or almonds, I'd be more excited. |
While those were baking, we tried out our tulip paste skills. The tulip paste was already made from the last restaurant group, but we are going to make it later in this section. Three of us spread the tulip paste out on parchment paper in thin strips using a plastic stencil [really just a rectangle cut out of the lid of a box]. And two of us were in charge of placing them in and taking them out of the oven and rolling them onto the rings so they would be circular. I was in charge of the oven and I have to admit the tulip paste process was pretty cool. While hesitant at first about sticking my hands into the oven, after the first few (very mild) burns, I wasn't as terrified anymore. Working with the tulip paste at the oven stage is pretty intense though -- sticking your hands into the oven in the first place, and then doing it again to remove pretty hot parchment paper and then handling even hotter dough, which you have to do in less than 30 seconds after removing it from the oven otherwise it will harden without being shaped. My fingertips feel really weird. We may have broken a few throughout the process. But the tulip paste "cookies" taste pretty good and the unspoken agreement was that we got to eat the broken ones.
Making these tulip paste rings was part of the decoration for plating the pear tarts. After they were done, Jean-Luc showed us how we would be plating the dessert for today's service. Talk about elaborate. First he set the pear tart on the plate, then added a semi-circle of anglaise sauce, then a strip of raspberry sauce on top of that (both made by an earlier restaurant group). He used a paring knife to make little circles in the raspberry and anglaise sauce. Then he set the tulip paste ring on top of the pear tart and placed a scoop of blueberry sorbet (from the previous restaurant group; we would have used vanilla, but we haven't made it yet) on top of the ring, in the centre of the pear tart, to hold the ring in place. Then he added a chocolate triangle with the green cocoa butter pattern on it onto the plate, sticking into the sorbet. Then, to top it off, he added a cape gooseberry to the plate and dredged the tart in icing sugar. No big deal, right?
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| A re-creation of Jean-Luc's original plating. |
Then Jean-Luc showed us where the dessert orders would come in and, from that point on, I checked the machine every few minutes, feeling a little more anxious than usual. It took forever for our first order to come in though.
While we were waiting, we made an anglaise sauce, which is much thinner and lighter than pastry cream. Other than decorating plates, I'm not sure what it is used for, but I am sure we will find out. It was a pretty easy process but requires a lot of attention so that you don't overcook your eggs once they have been added to the mixture. But you want to cook it enough that the mixture has thickened a little. But not as much as in a pastry cream. And you definitely do not want to bring it to a boil. There were a lot of rules. But it wasn't actually that hard. I may have even not finished last.
Then, the first order came in and we all rushed to the prep area. Then, another order. Each order was for two and I think after the first two, we got an order for a couple more. Jean-Luc brought back the first plate because the scoop of sorbet wasn't round enough. The instructor for the servers brought back another plate because there were fingerprints all over it. I almost forgot to dredge mine in icing sugar, but I managed to not have to redo it. So, that was good. It wasn't as intense as it could have been. Jean-Luc even fake yelled at us for a bit to make it feel more real. The 40 that we have to do tomorrow are probably going to be a little bit more fast-paced. Not many people ordered dessert today. After we had done all of the restaurant orders, Jean-Luc asked us to do 8 for the cooks to try. We approached this in more of a conveyer belt fashion, rather than everyone trying to do their own and reaching for the same ingredients at the same time, which I think made more sense. [We all tend to get a little possessive over our desserts and getting enough experience.]
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| Not enough time to take good pictures, clearly. |
While working with a time limit seemed really scary at first, today didn't seem as intense as it has looked when I've been watching as part of a different group. Jean-Luc did say that our group catches onto things quickly, so maybe we're just awesome... We'll see how tomorrow goes. Plating 40 desserts in total means that we will be doing at least 8 each, and today I did maybe 4. And not all at the same time. But it'll totally be okay. Jean-Luc promised not to yell at us.
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Today's Recipes
Sweet Dough
400 g flour
200 g sugar
4 g baking powder
200 g butter
2 eggs
Poaching Syrup
1 litre water
400 g sugar
50 g honey
1 cinnamon stick
1 anise star
vanilla
Bourdaloue Cream
150 g butter
100 g icing sugar
20 g cornstarch
1 egg
2 egg yolk
130 g ground almonds
160 g pastry cream
100 ml whipped cream
Tulip Paste
130 g butter
130 g icing sugar
2 egg whites
100 g flour
Anglaise
250 ml milk
250 ml cream
100 g sugar
5 egg yolk
pinch of vanilla
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